ne ee en eh ee ie ee A 


ap bags g hnepeen tay hing? aatapeline natthigaine mes 


i 
um 


iolae i 
fires 


Ree ARTUR cunt’ 
art et 


enna a 


i 


ty 


fsa 
HK, 


yt 


if 


af 
+Ft 


f 
7 
i 
i 
. 


ene 


mpg mt on a 


Sarsseee Se 


Sar 


ee 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2023 with funding from 
University of Illinois Uroana-Champaign Alternates 


https://archive.org/details/englishlanguagei01krap_0 


Return this book on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. 


University of Illinois Library 


1.161—I141 


THE 
ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
IN AMERICA 


Fas) reise 
ti) Mile? 
- Lie oe 
: ary 
ery 
v 
y 
Zon 
Te 


THE 
PING LISH LANGUAGE 
IN AMERICA 


By 
George Philip Krapp 


Professor of English in Columbia Unwersity 


Volume I 


THE CENTURY Co. 
FOR THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 


New York MCMXXV 


Copyricut, 1925, By 
THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 


PRINTED IN U.S. A. 


: alle 
K V6 2 .\ GBaay } 
Vil 


Cape 
PREFACE 


Though American histories of other kinds abound, of politics, 
of diplomacy, of painting, music, even of furniture, the American 
language has strangely escaped historical treatment. Perhaps it 
has generally been assumed that the language of America enjoys the 

© felicity which is said to be the lot of persons and states without a 
<> history. But the life of the English language in America has covered 
-) three hundred years, and so long a stretch of static happiness cer- 
©“ tainly could not be expected in any thing human. In truth Ameri- 
can English extends over just those periods in which the English 
elanguage, reflecting new and complicated developments in social 
jand economic conditions, has undergone some of its most interesting 
\ changes. In these_ ‘changes the English language in America has 
{Shared to as great an extent as the American people have shared 
\\in the development of the civilization of the modern world. 
2 In their immediate day and hour the facts of current American 
\ English have not infrequently challenged attention. But such 
watudies of American English as have been made reflect for the most 
s Spart an impressionistic or polemic interest in the speech of the day, 
“and though often animated and amusing, and sometimes the vehicles 
ior a certain amount of valuable information, they have offered 
\very little in the way of systematic elucidation of the English lan- 
v “guage in America. Perhaps most attention has been paid in these 
; treatises, both by Britons and by Americans, to the ever-burning 
“question whether American English is as good as British English. 
N ‘Among recent discussions of the relations between British and 
Ben crican English the most elaborate as well as the most independent 
is contained in Mencken’s American Language. Studies of this 
\kind, however, have usually been more significant as inquiries into 
«social prejudices than into linguistic history. 
. One may question whether even now the time is ripe for writing 
aN) history of the English language in America. If by ripeness one 
“means that the details for the definitive history of the American 


e\ Vv, 


. ‘ ra 


\ 


vl PREFACE 


language have all been collected, certainly the time is not ripe, but 
as certainly it never will be so. Historians have frequently lamented 
that history lags so far behind happenings. The history of an event 
cannot be written until too late to know about it, until immediate 
knowledge has been simplified and ‘interpreted’ by viewing the 
event in the accumulated opinion of tradition. But if this is a 
necessary condition under which the historian must work, the time 
for writing a history of the English language in America will never 
arrive until our speech is a dead language and its history is written 
by a representative of some new and alien civilization. A less 
dismal way of approaching the question, however, may be that of 
asking whether an author who attempts the subject is as ripe for 
the undertaking as he may well hope to be. In answer all the 
present author can say is that he has devoted years of interested 
study to the subject, that he presents such materials as he has col- 
lected and such conclusions as he has reached not as final, but as 
salvage from the wastes of time which it seems advisable to tow into 
a harbor while opportunity permits. 

The historical study of English in America has the double effect 
of bringing the past closer and at the same time enriching it with a 
distant and strange content. History both deepens and shortens 
perspective. It relieves a flat chronology by filling it with detail, 
but by filling it, at the same time it makes the past seem less exten- 
sive. Nothing is so long as a vacant half hour, and imagination 
alone can make a distant perspective. It can make even a remote 
golden age. As one studies detail, however, one realizes that no 
moment of the past was golden, but every moment was real and 
human. As historical knowledge grows the remote comes nearer, 
and humanity is seen not to have been as different one hundred, 
two hundred or three hundred years ago as it was supposed to be. 
It is so at least in the historical study of the American language. 
Perhaps one cannot quite say that there is nothing new under the 
sun in speech, but one can say that what seems new in American 
speech will most often be shown on further examination merely to be 
something old in a new surrounding. 


PREFACE Vil 


It would be quite practicable to take American English as the 
point of departure for ventures into the general history of the whole 
past of the English language or even into general psychological lin- 
guistics. Neither of these purposes has been present in the compo- 
sition of this book. It would seem that a more limited and immedi- 
ate field of interest and duty lay before the student of American 
English. By limiting the treatment one is enabled to present a 
greater abundance of local detail than otherwise might be appro- 
priate. But even with this excuse the author has been compelled 
to ask himself not infrequently if he has not burdened his story 
with too ample collections of fact. The historical student in one 
corner of his heart is not altogether unlike the stamp or curio col- 
lector. He finds it hard to resist the charm of a specimen. A speci- 
men attracts for various reasons, the situation in which it was found, 
the shading of value which it acquires from context, or merely be- 
cause it has never before been put on record. And after all the his- 
torian has the best right to be something of an antiquary. No one 
surely has a better opportunity than he to collect for the museums. 
In the matter of exhaustive citations it has seemed better, therefore, 
to err on the side of inclusiveness than on that of exclusiveness. In 
a work of historical reference, it is annoying not to find what one is 
looking for. The author of this treatise does not hope that he has 
saved his readers infallibly from this annoyance, but at least he has 
not neglected his opportunities to be as inclusive as possible. The 
same may be said with respect to the citation of authorities. It has 
seemed better to be specific than vaguely general, even at the expense 
sometimes of being needlessly specific. Examples and illustrations 
have not been cited therefore without indication of their origin, 
whether from some other study, from some document, or if no literary 
source 1s given, from personal observation. 

This history has therefore been made documentary so far as pos- 
sible by direct quotation of passages. The study of words in the 
chapter on the American vocabulary treats in detail only words for 
which documentary citations or direct evidence can be given. The 
only way to save the treatment of vocabulary from degenerating 


vill PREFACE 


into a medley of chatty and amusing and doubtfully accurate re- 
marks about words is by constant reference to actual usage. The 
great advance of Thornton’s American Glossary over older books on 
Americanisms lies in the fact that Thornton gives title, page and date 
for every word he discusses. The method is sound and every one 
who will study American vocabulary intelligently must start from 
Thornton and make such additions as his opportunities enable him 
to make. 

A preface is not the place to dwell on these topics at length, but 
attention may be called to the many glimpses of the changing state 
of American culture which one gets through the study of the lan- 
guage. One realizes intimately in this way the early dangers which 
confronted the Union, the dangers of disintegration which, as many 
hoped, language and the study of language were to remove. The 
hope was not vain, for undoubtedly language has been one of the 
strongest binding forces in American experience. 

One sees also the struggles and conflicts in social ideas as they 
made for uniformity and as they determined values. The notion 
that usage could be regulated by an authority appealed strongly to 
the sympathy of Americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries—unfortunately has not altogether ceased to appeal. But 
there seems to be a peculiar and pathetic significance in the general 
acceptance of Walker in the early nineteenth century and in the at- 
tempts to live up to Walker. This feeling for Walker was different 
from the earlier respect for Dr. Johnson, and on the whole less intel- 
ligent. Dr. Johnson was accepted as a source of positive informa- 
tion, as one who could tell you how to spell words and how to define 
them. But Walker was accepted as a source of social distinction, 
to be acquired by appropriation if one had it not by nature. 

So far as general standards of culture are concerned, it is quite 
obvious from the study of the language that, since the days of colon- 
ization, a great change has come over American ways of regarding 
this particular social activity of speech. This change can be seen 
to a certain extent still in progress. Among an unschooled older 
generation of speakers, certain liberties and variabilities of vocabu- 


PREFACE 1x 


lary, syntax and pronunciation are present which the newer genera- 
tion, socialized and normalized by experience in the public schools, 
condemns or charitably overlooks. Standards of speech have become 
more regular and severer than they formerly were. An educated 
man who should now assume the pose of rusticity would arouse the 
suspicion of cheap trickery, for rusticity of speech no longer char- 
acterizes the average citizen, but only those noticeably below the 
average. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, 
even through the first half of the nineteenth century, the conditions 
must have been different. In a seventeenth or eighteenth century 
village, or even town, the number of conventionally educated persons 
would be small, perhaps only the minister and the schoolmaster. 
This means that the standards of the conventional education could 
not apply to the general life of the community. Pronunciation, 
grammar and spelling were not then tests of respectability, of demo- 
cratic equality, in the degree to which they have since become. 
What seems now like illiterate speech, the speech of persons who do 
not reflect how they speak, was then merely the normal speech of 
the community. 

The town records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are 
doubtless fairly representative of the average cultural level of Ameri- 
can life of the times. These records were not usually kept by a 
learned person but by some respectable citizen of the community. 
They are rich mines of information to be derived both from direct 
statement and by inference. The conscious struggles of the recorders 
as well as their inadvertences are instructive, though this evidence 
must always be treated cautiously, since even the so-called illiterate 
person may have his highly literary moments. Thus in the Hemp- 
stead Records, farm acquires a kind of Hellenic look when it is spelled 
pharme (1664). For home the spelling whome is very frequent in 
several records, and one at first wonders whether this spelling rep- 
resents a real pronunciation or is merely a semi-learned extension of 
the spelling of whole. In this instance other evidence supports the 
conclusion that whome was really pronounced with the initial con- 
sonant of whim, the final bit of evidence being the inadvertent spelling 


x PREFACE 


wome. But these unconventional spellings are not always so deeply 
significant. In the Hempstead Records for 1659 one finds kow ceeper 
and cow ceeper, and in 1664, cep and sep for keep. The spellings here 
mean nothing for pronunciation, though their logic is perfect. If 
c can have the value of k in cow, and if c can have the value of s 
in a word like receive, then s can have the value of k in keep. This 
shows clearness of mind, but sometimes the spellings indicate merely 
uncertainty, as when in these same records, 1660, 1661, particular 
is spelled piticler, piticlur, pitucler, pitculler, partickler, the first prob- 
ably standing nearest to the recorder’s actual pronunciation. 

Much of this irregular spelling, syntax and pronunciation of a 
century or two ago still persists, the important change which has 
taken place being one of attitude toward it. To regard these and 
similar unconventionalities as being the genuinely native elements 
in American speech, the real American language, would be absurd 
both from the historical as well as the psychological point of view. 
Good grammar ordinarily has as ancient a history as bad grammar, 
and popular or illiterate English can be carried back to British 
sources no more and no less definitely than standard English. The 
stabilizing of standards which has taken place in American English 
is by no means peculiar to this country, but the same development 
has been characteristic of the whole modern period of the English 
language. 

This history was not written to cover a special plea for a dis- 
tinctive American language, illiterate or otherwise. On the con- 
trary the author feels, as every disinterested student of American 
English must feel, that historical study brings American English 
into a closer relation to the central tradition of the English language 
than is commonly supposed to exist by those who have not looked 
at English in America from the historical and comparative angle. 
At various times of heated sentiment, attempts have been made to 
manufacture tradition, to construct a peculiar American language 
when none existed. Thus immediately after the Revolution, many 
advocates arose of what they were pleased to call a Federal English 
—an engaging name, though the thing itself was difficult to put down 


PREFACE xi 


in black and white. Later Walt Whitman grew eloquent over the 
notion of a reconstructed language for These States, though he 
failed to give the prescription for it. Most frequently the genuine 
American language has been supposed to be a speech markedly 
different from the standard English of cultivated conversation or 
the body of English literature—in short a popular and more or less 
illiterate dialect. But why popular speech should be considered 
more genuine, more essentially American, than standard speech it is 
difficult to see. Indeed striving towards standardized forms of 
speech would seem to have been one of the most constant and char- 
acteristic of American impulses. The parallel between America in 
the last one hundred and fifty years and Italy in the time of Dante 
is more than superficial and accidental. In America as then in Italy, 
we have been striving to attain an “illustrious vernacular,” an 
English speech lifted above the level of any local or class dialect. 
This illustrious vernacular has been a standardized and more or less 
manipulated speech, to a certain degree an artificial and literary 
speech. But it has been nevertheless for the last century and more 
the norm by which other forms of American English have been 
estimated. Popular life is interesting and popular speech is inter- 
esting, and both by contrast are also often amusing, but in its usual 
manifestations, the so-called “‘real American language’’ is nothing 
more than a kind of literary class dialect, made by peppering normal 
English with a certain number of popular violations of conventional 
grammar and pronunciation. It is vivacious enough and may be 
true enough as an element in dramatic characterization, but to say 
that this is the real American language is equivalent to saying that 
all persons who are not garage keepers or shopladies or factory hands, 
all persons who do not disrupt every convention of propriety that 
occasion offers, are frauds and impostors. But American English is 
certainly larger than the speech of one class, even than that of the 
superbly self-satisfied class of the illiterates. Popular American 
speech is no more the real American language than the speech of the 
London coster is the genuine speech of England or than Apache 
Parisian is the only genuine French. Any dialect may of course be 


Xi PREFACE 


genuine when it is genuinely used, but of the many forms of a highly 
developed language like English, who shall say which is the quin- 
tessentially genuine? or who shall insist that the crude only may be 
genuine? 

In the matter of bibliography the author’s main endeavor has 
been to prevent the bibliographical machinery from becoming too 
burdensome. Books referred to only once or twice are ordinarily 
treated as casuals, their titles are given in the body of the text where 
the reference occurs, but are not included in the general bibliography. 
The names of such authors are of course in the index. The general 
bibliography consists of titles of books which have been mainly and 
more or less constantly useful in the composition of the history. 
Titles frequently referred to in the text are given at such places only 
in abbreviated form, but fuller details, like dates and places of pub- 
lication, can easily be found in the alphabetical list of the bibliog- 
raphy. An exhaustive bibliography of the whole subject of American 
English would have been extremely bulky and would itself fill a large 
volume. The bibliography here given can be supplemented by the 
several bibliographies contained in the volumes of Dzialect Notes. 
Tucker, American English, pp. 332-345, also has a bibliography, 
and the very useful bibliography of Mencken’s first edition, pp. 323- 
339, appears conveniently classified and enlarged in the later edi- 
tions. Attention may be called likewise to the forthcoming Bib- 
liography of the English Language, by Professor Arthur G. Kennedy, 
of Stanford University. And finally, almost any library or cataloging 
index will furnish abundant titles on American English, though 
many of these titles, especially in journalistic and magazine literature, 
will be found to be of little value. It seems true that many persons 
are inclined to rush into print on questions of language without an 
adequate foundation of knowledge. Their comments are often more 
interesting to the student of human passions and perversities than 
they are to the historical student of language. In some instances 
titles of books not specially important in themselves have been 
included in the bibliography. These have been mentioned for their 
representative value as titles of types of books which the student 


PREFACE xii 


of historical American English is compelled to examine. The author 
will remark, however, that he has in his own card indexes scores 
more of such titles of antiquated grammars and spelling books which 
he has refrained from thrusting upon the attention of his readers. 
Some time a complete bibliography of American English must be 
made, but that is a subject for a book in itself. 

A word of explanation may be given of the author’s occasional 
use of the word British in a phrase like British English to contrast 
with American English. Englishmen themselves do not now com- 
monly use the adjective British in this way, though they do speak 
of the British Empire, and certain schools advertise themselves as 
being conducted exclusively for British boys. Englishmen would 
not however speak of a certain usage of speech in England as British 
to distinguish it from Canadian or Australian or American. To them 
it would be merely English, the thing itself. But if students of Eng- 
lish in England do not feel the need for distinguishing terms for the 
several aspects of the language, including their own, students of 
English in America do feel this need and can scarcely avoid using 
terms which make these distinctions clear. The word British is an 
obvious one to use, and it has been employed in this history because 
it is practically convenient. Others have done the same, and the 
word has acquired a certain standing as an Americanism. A similar 
excuse may be made for the word American as an adjective limited 
in application to the United States. In strict logic such a use is not 
justifiable, but common practice and understanding have long since 
put the word beyond the jurisdiction of logic. 

Economy and the demands of a moderate degree of exactness 
have necessitated the use of a phonetic alphabet in the discussion of 
sounds and pronunciations. The reasons for this necessity have 
been set forth more at large at the beginning of the second volume, 
in the chapter which discusses pronunciations, and there also readers 
unfamiliar with the notation of the International Phonetic Associ- 
ation will find the symbols briefly described. The system of notation 
employed is simple and the few minutes devoted to understanding it 
will be amply repaid by increased ease and swiftness in reading. 


‘ 
na 
he 


Mes 7 is Oi ea 
Li 


’ ¢* 
¢ 
heh 
51 
4 
i 4 
a ¥ 
-. f 
(+ 
ui 
A’ 
+ 
| 
t 
: 
i 
' 
‘ 
or 
' 
4 
’ 


of 
Pe? 
4 
“° 
4 
iva] 
vn ’ 
‘ y ihe + 
Oa ww 
yar oh 
« F ] 4. 
j J rf oT a 
bali ; Y 


7 i a f, 
Gan ie ‘ - 
i A Mine or 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
Pee ice VLOTHER' LONGUR WL ieee chamain meme iiray UU 5) 
SUSY COA ULAECY 1.4) 0), (VCS nM amir MURR Amn ae eb he) Soul Oe 
UME MRE OPC AUNIAADICE 1/0) ).\ SUA eu URL ame CARMA Eee glean cat th OO 
SPT UBRASY PLOLA LOTS ii G0 il Mian tm MRAM area sun evar burl H Ul OLIV iy Ode) 
WE OMG Hy aA Ee Ea Ane At ATA ANTS DAN eT en AU 
NIMPAMERICAN  SPEELING . (ie uialireiientiit iat i kytnsti| 1 Gee 
TIL PASLERICAN  JJICTIONARIES | (/2 Uni miva vai hye lin sel Us ord 


XV 


5 
yA ‘ ’ 


Wag a 1 


rowan ; i t 
| f LF eae 
Neh Sides \a 
da Nake ¥ : fe Ny 
) aly a ‘7 3 i] i 


1 
ie 
fi it 
Wal 
? 
{ Wy 


THE 
ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
IN AMERICA 


i 
¥ f 


Me 
ees it 
neu.) 


THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
IN AMERICA 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 


Long experience in one’s native speech causes it to seem so obvi- 
ous and natural, like elemental things, wind and rain and sun, like 
breathing and walking, that it makes no urgent demands for explana- 
tion. ‘It needes not,’ said Sir Philip Sidney, “that a man should 
be put to schoole to learne_ his mother tongue.’”’ Perhaps not—at 
least in Sidney’s day. In later times, and especially in America, 
speech has not been taken for granted quite so easily. On closer 
examination this familiar activity of speech is seen to be extraor- 
dinarily complicated and subtle, in the end often inexplicable. A 
complete account of the American idiom, if one could give it, would 
go far towards explaining the whole spiritual history of the American 
people. But this chapter does not pretend to give any such com- 
plete account. It attempts the more possible task of setting down 
some of the most significant features of that background of experi- 
ence, hidden or open, against which thoughtful Americans project 
their speech when it becomes for them a matter of conscious reflec- 
tion. It is true that speech in the main rests upon a foundation of 
feeling, not of reflection, and these less conscious attitudes cannot 
be disregarded. That their feeling for a mother tongue and their 
opinions concerning it have been the same among all Americans at 
any given moment, it would be folly to suppose. They have been 
sufficiently present, however, and sufficiently unified for at least two 
hundred years to permit one to speak of an American mother tongue, 
of a general and standard American speech. The American people 


realize themselves as a nation in part through the possession of a 
3 


4 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


distinctive speech. This distinctive speech, this mother tongue, the 
general background of which it is proposed here to examine, is obvi- 
ously English, but it is, first of all, the English of America. 

Immediately the questions arise, however, whether Americans 
have generally viewed their mother tongue in some relation to older 
British English, and if they have not, what they have substituted 
for this pious tradition. But the mere asking of these questions 
shows that language is not a thing apart. It is an inseparable ele- 
ment in the whole of a people’s life and has intimate connections with 
politics and other activities. Before the United States came into 
being, it would scarcely have occurred to anyone, either on this side 
the water or on the other, to think of the English language in Amer- 
ica as anything but an extension of British English, different in its 
local habitation from the speech of the home country, but not dif- 
ferent either in present character or future prospects. Does not a 
son remain a son, wherever he may dwell? 

A son, however, may become a man, hungry for personal rights 
and privileges, and when the colonies began to claim the dignity of 
manhood, even the gentlest prick served to burst the bubble of this 
assumption of homogeneity which hitherto had been so comfortably 
accepted on both sides of the water. Instead of fixing attention 
upon similarities, both British and Americans now began to notice 
the differences that separated them from each other. Both were 
surprised to find these differences so great, and naturally this same 
discovery of fact, or supposed fact, led to opposite interpretations in 
theory. The Americans were inclined to see in these differences a 
mark of their peculiar virtue and claims to consideration, while the 
Britisher was often moved to look upon them as indications of an 
unsuspected deterioration and degradation which circumstances had 
suddenly brought into clear light. So far as the language itself is 
concerned, both of these extreme views were wrong. Colonial Eng- 
lish had developed no remarkable gifts or powers, nor had it degen- 
erated from a purer and more perfect type of speech which was only 
carefully preserved in England. After the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, American English remained as it always has been, a closely 


SS  ——— _ 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 5 


related but differentiated branch of the English language, connected 
by the most intimate bonds of tradition with the parent speech. 
The narrow partisanships which were drawn into the consideration 
of speech arose not from that activity itself, but from entirely dif- 
ferent occasions for an indulgence in emotions of loyal pride or 
prejudice. 

Though the English language in America did not experience a 
new birth with the separation of the colonies from Great Britain, 
that event nevertheless provides a reasonable starting place for the 
consideration of what we must from that time call American Eng- 
lish. Deep rooted though it was in the past, this English of eigh- 
teenth century America came then to be regarded from a new angle, 
and though the language in itself may not greatly have changed 
from what it was before, as in all other human social institutions the 
changing opinions which man held with respect to it must be counted 
as a part of its essential character. The special history of American 
English as something consciously separate and distinguishable began, 
therefore, with the realization of the existence of an American nation. 
In the third quarter of the eighteenth century Americans began to 
feel that their mother tongue was something near and intimate, the 
speech which gave to them a unity upon their own American soil. 

National or standard languages have seldom developed under the 
control of conscious intention, and to this rule the English language 
in America is no exception. In its present state, apart from what 
it has inherited from older traditions, which is obviously a great 
deal, American English is the result of a variety of impulses and 
tendencies, often crossing each other in a bewildering fashion and 
never for long uniting into a large and clearly defined purpose which 
the American people have held before them as an ideal towards 
which in their language they should aspire. It would have been 
surprising had it been otherwise. Languages grow and change only 
as they accompany the daily activities of men and women in the 
communication of their thoughts to each other. They are, more- 
over, the least conscious of the social possessions of peoples. Political 
and ethical ideals may be formulated, even in the earlier stages of 


6 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


their development, with a certain degree of definiteness and clear- 
ness. But a nation as a whole rarely gives thought to the trend of 
development of its speech, is rarely conscious that there is a trend 
of development. Its language may be deeply affected by the gen- 
eral tone of its life and thought, but the language itself is a resultant 
by-product of these general influences, and only in slight measure 
does it determine their character or weight. Language in the main 
is an echo of life, not a motive power in it. 

At times, however. theorists and reformers arise who attempt 
and in some degree are able to give language a more active significance. 
When the American colonies at the end of the eighteenth century 
finally detached themselves from their older political associations, 
the occasion seemed unusually propitious for the formation of a 
native American speech which should not only be distinctive for 
American life but should also help the new nation to a realization 
of those inner purposes and aspirations which were still engaged in 
the struggle for existence. The beginnings are seen in an article by 
an unknown author (see Albert Matthews, Transactions of the Colonial 
Society of Massachusetts, XIV, 263-264), addressed to the Literati 
of America and published in the Royal American Magazine for 
January, 1774. In this article the writer proposes a society to be 
called Fellows of the American Society of Language, “‘for perfecting 
the English language in America.’”’ The author expresses the con- 
viction that America will soon be “the seat of science.’? Perhaps 
the writer of this address to the literati of America was John Adams, 
for a few years later, after several very significant events had hap- 
pened, in a letter to the ‘‘President of Congress,’ dated September 
5, 1780, John Adams proposed an academy for “fixing and improv - 
ing” American English, Works, Boston, 1851, Vol. VII, p. 249. He 
remarks that the British have occasionally tried a similar project, 
but have failed: ‘“‘so that to this day there is no grammar nor dic- 
tionary extant of the English language which has the least public 
authority.”’ ‘The honor of forming the first public institution for 
refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English lan- 
guage,” he continues, ‘‘I hope is reserved for congress; they have 


= —~- — ~ = - - _ \ a 7 
ON EE EEE eS —™s 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 7 


every motive that can possibly influence a public assembly to under- 
take it. It will have a happy effect upon the union of the States to 
have a public standard for all persons in every part of the continent 
to appeal to both for the signification and pronunciation of the lan- 
guage. The constitutions of all the States in the Union are so 
democratized that eloquence will become the instrument for rec- 
ommending men to their fellow-citizens, and the principal means 
of advancement through the various ranks and offices of society.”’ 
The project is described a few weeks later in a letter to Edmund 
Jenings, September 30, 1780. ‘‘ After Congress shall have done it,”’ 
that is, shall have established the academy, says Adams, ‘“‘ perhaps 
the British king and parliament may have the honor of copying the 
example. This I should admire. England will never more have 
any honor, excepting now and then that of imitating the Americans. 
I assure you, Sir, I am not altogether in jest. I see a general in- 
clination after English in France, Spain and Holland, and it may 
extend throughout Europe. The population and commerce of 
America will force their language into general use.’’* 

Adams returns to the subject later, Works, Vol. IX, p. 509, and 
again expresses the opinion that ‘‘ English will be the most respectable 
language in the world,” largely because of the number of people 
who will be speaking it. A contemporary Frenchman, Roland de 
la Platiére, addressing the Academy at Lyons in 1789, went as far 
as Adams and spoke enthusiastically not merely of English, but 
specifically of the language of the United States, as the possible 
universal language of the future.? 


1See Matthews, izbid., p. 262. Language like this explains why similar state- 
ments still being made have such a hauntingly familiar sound, as when Walter Hines 
Page, Letters, I, 144, writes as follows, October, 1913, from the American Embassy in 
London to President Wilson: ‘‘The future of the world belongs to us. A man needs 
to live here, with two economic eyes in his head, a very little time to become very 
sure of this. Everybody will see it presently. These English are spending their 
capital, and it is their capital that continues to give them their vast power. Now 
what are we going to do with the leadership of the world presently when it clearly 
falls into our hands? And how can we use the English for the highest uses of democ- 
racy?”’ 

‘See Baldensperger, ‘‘ Une Prédiction Inédite sur |’Avenir de la Langue des Btats- 
Unis,” in Modern Philology, XV, 475-476. 


8 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


A similar high patriotic purpose underlay the ideals with respect 
to an American language which Noah Webster preached with energy, 
with as much scholarship as his day afforded, and with not a little 
common sense. In his earliest utterances, in the Grammatical 
Institute, Part I, 1783, which later became the American Spelling 
Book, one observes still a good deal of the heightened feeling of the 
war just ended. ‘‘The author wishes to promote the honour and 
prosperity of the confederated republics of America,’’ wrote Webster, 
p. 14, ‘‘and chearfully throws his mite into the common treasure of 
patriotic exertions. This country must in some future time, be as 
distinguished by the superiority of her literary improvements, as 
she is already by the liberality of her civil and ecclesiastical constitu- 
tions. Europe is grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny—in 
that country laws are perverted, manners are licentious, literature 
is declining and human nature debased. For America in her infancy 
to adopt the present maxims of the old world, would be to stamp 
the wrinkles of decrepid age upon the bloom of youth and to plant 
the seeds of decay in a vigorous constitution.”’ 

Only rarely, and only after the fervor of the Revolution had some- 
what cooled, was a milder voice raised in support of the continuity 
of the ancient traditions of the English language in America. Thus 
a writer in the Monthly Magazine and American Review, Vol. III, 
1-4, July, 1800, in an Essay ‘‘On the Scheme of an American Lan- 
guage,’ protests against the notion that “‘grammars and dictionaries 
should be compiled by natives of the country, not of the British or 
English, but of the American tongue.’’ And instead of endeavoring 
to insulate themselves from their ancestors, he advises Americans 
to direct all their labors to the opposite purpose. On the whole he 
sees little difference between American and British English, and 
prophesies confidently that ‘‘the future bards of Potowmac and 
Messouri shall be said to write English.” It is his conviction that 
the literary tradition will be a sufficiently strong binding force to 
hold the language of the English and American people together. 
“Books,” he declares, ‘are the only adequate authority for the use 
of words,” and good American English must be the speech of those 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 9) 


“whose dialect is purified by intimate intercourse with English 
books.’” 

On the whole, however, most persons agreed with Webster that 
the isolation of America from England and from the rest of Europe 
was bound to result in the development of an entirely new speech 
in the New World. Webster was convinced that this isolation would 
produce, “in a course of time, a language in North America, as 
different from the future language of England, as the modern Dutch, 
Danish and Swedish are from the German, or from one another,” 
Dissertations (1789), p. 22. Thomas Jefferson thought it not im- 
probable, Writings, ed. Washington, VI, 188, that the changes in 
American English would in time “separate it in name as well as in 
power, from the mother-tongue.’’ These prophecies were not un- 
reasonable. When one considered the great differentiation which 
had taken place among the Teutonic dialects of Europe, closely 
related geographically, it must have seemed, from the point of view 
of the eighteenth century, all the more certain that two countries 
so widely separated as England and America must diverge widely 
in their common speech. The forecast has turned out to be false 
because a student of Webster’s or Jefferson’s day could not foresee 
the international and highly literary character of American civiliza- 
tion as it has developed in the century and a quarter since they 
wrote. 

This certainty of the formation of a new language in America, 
Webster welcomed whole-heartedly. He believed that the language 
of England had passed the point of its highest development and 
was already in a state of decline. The life of language seemed to 
him to be like that of the forms of organic life in the world of nature. 
A seed after it was planted grew, under favoring conditions, until 
it reached the limits of its possible growth, the plant then remained 
stationary for a moment, but immediately it must fall into decay. 
The stage of improvement or growth in the English language cor- 
responding to the natural growth of a plant, Webster considers to 
have commenced with the age of Queen Elizabeth and ended with 


1 See also tbid., III, 173, and III, 184-185. 


10 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


the reign of George II. ‘It would have been fortunate for the 
language,” he adds, ‘‘had the stile of writing and the pronunciation 
of words been fixed, as they stood in the reign of Queen Anne and 
her successor. Few improvements have been made since that time, 
but innumerable corruptions in pronunciation have been introduced 
by Garrick, and in stile, by Johnson, Gibbon and their imitators,” 
Dissertations, p. 30. The taste of her writers ‘‘already corrupted, 
and her language on the decline,” Webster regards England as no 
longer providing a worthy model to follow. He would have Ameri- 
cans take a fresh start in this cyclical process of the life of language. 
Here was a fresh people, in a new country, with untried ideals, an 
entirely new life was here to be worked out. It was not only the 
opportunity, it was the duty of the American people to develop a 
peculiar language of their own; “‘as a nation,” he declares, ‘‘we have 
a very great interest in opposing the introduction of any plan of 
uniformity with the British language, even were the plan proposed 
perfectly unexceptionable,” Dzissertations, p. 171. As America was 
now a self-constituted nation, he considered that American honor 
required that America should have a system of her own, in language 
as well as government. Will not the Atlantic Ocean, the pride of 
an independent nation, he asks, restrain our rage for imitating the 
errors of foreigners? To Webster, Englishmen were foreigners, 
and what have we to do, he asks, with the customs of a foreign 
nation? 

The elements from which Webster would construct the new Amer- 
ican speech he found ready to his hand. The American people, 
as he viewed them, were a race of simple folk, neither rustics nor 
peasants on the one hand, nor aristocrats on the other, corrupted by 
the false refinements of stage and court, in Webster’s phrasing, as 
these refinements flourished in the effete monarchies of Europe. It 
was the speech of this folk that Webster would make the basis for his 
new American English, especially the speech of the New England 
colonies as the region in which education and literary culture were 
most highly developed. He presents an engaging picture of the 
state of culture in New England in his day, which other authorities 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 11 


confirm as true, showing the wide extent of reading even among 
village folk, and the vivid interest in all matters of education which 
has been the great gift of New England to the American nation. It 
should be remembered that the New England settlers, even those 
who tilled the soil, tended to congregate in towns where social inter- 
course was possible, not to be sparsely scattered over vast territories, 
as were the settlers in other sections of the country. 

But Webster was not intent upon advocating a local New England 
standard as the general model for American English. He insists 
that the standard shall not be local but national, and that it shall be 
the standard set by the most enlightened, that is, the educated 
members of the several communities, not the most ignorant. Here 
at least, among much spread-eagle patriotism, we find a clear enun- 
ciation of principles which have ever been active in determining 
the character of the mother tongue of the American people. The 
advocacy of a national and literary standard for American speech 
was a logical response to the novel conditions in the new country. 
The standard of British English having been rejected, both for patri- 
otic reasons and also because it was too remote to be applied, as 
Webster himself was aware, there remained only the choice between 
the speech of one geographical or social community, to be elevated 
above all the rest, and the speech of no community at all, that is, 
a manipulated generalization of speech habits which should cover 
the nation as a whole. It should be pointed out in passing that 
Webster understood quite well that this national speech must be to 
some extent theoretical and unreal, and that his advocacy of it was 
contrary to his general principle, that it is the duty of the student 
of the English language “‘to find what the language 7s, and not how 
it might have been made,’ Dissertations, p. ix. He compromised 
with his general principle, however, because a certain amount of 
artificial manipulation seemed necessary before the language could 
arrive at that ultimate uniformity short of which a democratic 
society cannot rest. In a passage in his Grammatical Institute, Part 
I, 1783, p. 6, Webster discusses the local variations in American 
speech which he thinks should be harmonized, and as this is the 


12 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


earliest. reference in which the differing details of American speech 
are described, the passage deserves to be quoted in full: 

“Not to mention small differences, I would observe that the in- 
habitants of New-England and Virginia have a peculiar pronunciation 
which affords much diversion to their neighbours. On the other hand, 
the language in the middle States is tinctured with a variety of 
Irish, Scotch and German dialects which are justly censured as devi- 
ations from propriety and the standard of elegant pronunciation. 
The truth is, wsus est Norma Loquendi, general custom is the rule 
of speaking, and every deviation from this must be wrong. The 
dialect of one State is as ridiculous as that of another; each is author- 
ized by local custom; and neither is supported by any superior ex- 
cellence. If in New-England we hear a flat, drawling pronunciation, 
in the more Southern States we hear the words veal, very, vulgar 
pronounced weal, wery, wulgar; wine, winter, etc., changed into vine, 
vinter; soft becomes saft; and raisins and wound, contrary to all 
rules and propriety, are pronounced reesins, woond. It is the present 
mode at the Southward, to pronounce u like yu, as virtyue, fortyune, 
etc., and in a rapid pronunciation. these become virchue, forchune, 
as also duty, duel, are changed into juty, juel.”’ 

In the Dissertations Webster later desires the New England 
“veoman” to alter his ‘“‘drawling nasal manner of speaking,” and 
likewise when he says marcy for mercy, or kiow for cow, he would have 
him change these pronunciations to accord with the more general 
custom. ‘‘Vast numbers of people’ who in Boston and Philadel- 
phia say weal and wessel for veal and vessel are asked to resign their 
peculiarities for the sake of uniformity. The Virginian is asked to 
pronounce his final r’s more fully, and all persons who cherish fash- 
ionable distinctions of pronunciation are told to put away such 
undemocratic affectations. 

Though this kind of compromise which Webster found it neces- 
sary to advocate in order to establish his standard of national use 
remains as much a necessity to-day as it ever was, national use based 
upon. the speech’ of educated speakers abides as the only general 
standard which has recognized value in American English. The 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 13 


bearing of this upon American speech was realized early by those 
who gave careful thought to American conditions. Cooper, in his 
Notions of the Americans (1828), analyzed the situation thoroughly 
and soundly. He declared that in America, ‘‘while there are pro- 
vincial, or state peculiarities, in tone, and even in pronunciation and 
use of certain words, there is no patois,’ Notions, I, 62. An Ameri- 
can, he avers, might distinguish between a Georgian and a man from 
New England, but a foreigner could not, and he adds that though 
Americans pass for natives every day in England, ‘‘it is next to 
impossible for an Englishman to escape detection in America.’”’ The 
reasons why it is impossible, in Cooper’s opinion, for an Englishman 
to escape detection are that in England not only are local distinctions 
more highly developed and fully preserved, but also a “‘slang of 
society” exists there with a ‘‘fashion of intonation . . . which it is 
often thought vulgar to omit,’’ with the result that speakers who 
escape the local dialects are likely to fall into this fashionable dialect. 
Cooper clearly recognized the futility of attempting to estimate 
American speech by a British standard. ‘If it be assumed,” he re- 
marks, Notions, II, 123, ‘‘that the higher classes in London are always 
to set the fashion in pronunciation, and the best living writers in 
England are to fix the meaning of words, the point is clearly decided 
in their favour, since one cannot see on what principle they are to 
be put in the wrong.’”’ Cooper acknowledged that for England the 
standard of speech is to be found in London, since there congregate 
those ‘“‘whose manners, birth, fortune, and political distinction make 
them the objects of admiration.’”’ So powerful was the authority 
of the cultivated society of the metropolis of British life, that it 
seemed to Cooper absurd to suppose that in comparison with this 
authority, either the church or the stage or education exerted any 
but a slight influence upon British speech. In other words, Cooper 
believed that England had a so clearly recognized and admired social 
aristocracy, an aristocracy of birth, wealth, and wit, centered in 
London, that it easily provided the standards for all things of the 
spirit. In America, however, he thought a different state of affairs 
existed. “If we had a great capital, like London,” he observed, 


14 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Notions, II, 124, “‘where men of leisure, and fortune, and education, 
periodically assembled to amuse themselves, I think we should estab- 
lish a fashionable aristocracy, too, which should give the mode to 
the forms of speech. . . . But we have no such capital, nor are we 
likely, for a long time to come, to have one of sufficient magnitude 
to produce any great effect on the language. . . . The habits of 
polite life, and even the pronunciation of Boston, of New York, of 
Baltimore, and of Philadelphia, vary in many things, and a prac- 
tised ear may tell a native of either of these places, by some little 
peculiarity of speech. There is yet no predominating influence to 
induce the fashionables of these towns to wish to imitate the fash- 
ionables of any other. If any place is to possess this influence, it 
will certainly be New York;” but even this Cooper thinks will not 
come to pass, and that ‘“‘an entirely different standard for the lan- 
guage must be established in the United States, from that which 
governs so absolutely in England.” Where is that standard to be 
found? Cooper’s answer is that it must be found in the speech of 
the nation as a whole, that in fact it already is found there. For 
if the people of America were like the people of any other country 
on earth, ‘we should be speaking at this moment a great variety of 
nearly unintelligible patois,’’ whereas in reality the American people 
speak the English language ‘‘as a nation better than any other people 
speak their language.’’ ‘This resemblance in speech can only be 
ascribed to the great diffusion of intelligence, and to the inexhaustible 
activity of the population, which, in a manner, destroys space.” 
“The distinctions in speech between New England and New York, 
or Pennsylvania, or any other State,’’ he continues, ‘‘ were far greater 
twenty years ago than they are now,” a change which cannot simply 
be explained as due to migration, since migration “would often 
introduce provincialisms without correcting them, did it not also, 
by bringing acute men together, sharpen wits, provoke comparisons, 
challenge investigations, and, finally, fix a standard.” 

For the last twenty years, concludes Cooper, it has been a matter — 
of hot dispute in which of the large towns in America the best Eng- 
lish is spoken, ‘The result of this discussion has been to convince — 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 15 


most people who know anything of the matter, that a perfectly pure 
English is spoken nowhere, and to establish the superiority, on one 
point in favor of Boston, on another in favor of New York, and so 
on to the end of the chapter.’’ Social standards being thus disposed 
of, as well as fashionable society, the church, the stage, Congress, 
the court, “for there is none but the President,’’ and the fashions 
of speech in England, the only guide to a standard speech which 
Cooper finds to be left is reason, and he is convinced that ‘‘in another 
generation or two, far more reasonable English will be used in this 
country than exists here now.”’ 

These opinions were expressed, it will be remembered, before 
Cooper’s return to America from his seven year’s residence in Europe. 
His notions of America expressed after his return are much less 
optimistic. ‘Without a social capital,’ so he wrote in the Preface 
of Home as Found (1888), “with twenty or more communities divided 
by distance and political barriers, her people, who are really more 
homogeneous than any other of the same numbers in the world per- 
haps, possess no standard for opinion, manners, social maxims, or 
even language.”’ The truth lay between these two extremes of state- 
ment. A national standard is, to be sure, not a perfectly realizable 
standard, and in that sense the people of America possessed no 
standard of speech. What they possessed, however, in this concep- 
tion of a national speech, was a guide to conduct as effectual as any 
recognized or formal rule could be. Perhaps also Cooper’s opinion 
of American speech as governed by reason calls for some interpre- 
tation. What he evidently meant to do was to distinguish between 
an instinctive social and traditional attitude towards speech, and 
one in which habits are determined to a greater extent by choice 
and intention. The latter he regarded as the attitude of Americans 
towards their speech, and in this sense their language might justly 
be called a ‘‘reasonable English.”’ 


In the earlier years of the American republic, this insistence upon 
the importance of a uniform and independent national speech was a 
logical result of the fear of disintegration which must always beset 


16 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


those interested in maintaining a federation of independent states. 
“But this I will presume to affirm,’’ wrote Alexander Hamilton, 
Works, ed. Lodge, II, 38, ‘‘that from New Hampshire to Georgia the 
people of America are as uniform in their interests and manners as 
those of any established in Europe.” The frequency with which 
one comes upon assertions like this is evidence that the fear of the 
contrary could not have been remote. 

One of the few utterances of the Philological Society, which 
flourished during the first years of the republic, is contained in a 
letter, dated New York, July 4, 1788, and signed by Josiah Hoffman, 
president, approving Webster’s American Spelling Book and “‘rec- 
ommending it to the use of schools in the United States, as an accu- 
rate, well digested system of principles and rules, calculated to 
destroy the various false dialects in pronunciation in the several 
States, an object very desirable in a federal republic.” This letter 
was frequently reprinted by Webster in editions of his spelling book. 
It may seem a little strange that mature and important citizens 
should concern themselves about anything so insignificant as an 
elementary spelling book. But to their minds, the elementary 
spelling book carried a burden of deep meaning. Anything that 
might decrease the danger of disruption was eagerly seized upon in 
those troubled years. Not only the writers, grammarians and 
dictionary makers of the early years of the republic, but the states- 
men as well expressed themselves emphatically on the importance 
of maintaining a uniform national speech in America. With the 
large increase of migration and the expansion of the country west- 
ward in the early nineteenth century, the necessity for the cultiva- 
tion of a national standard seemed to many observers more pressing 
than ever. Commenting on one of the minor recommendations 
of his pronouncing speller, the first edition of which appeared in 
1819, Cummings remarks, p. x, that ‘‘if we consider the great impor- 
tance of preserving uniformity in our country, and of avoiding what 
already begins to be called northern and southern pronunciation, 
no attempt to preserve harmony in the republic of letters will be 
regarded as too minute.’”’ ‘‘As we become more extended,” he 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 17 


observes, “the greater is the probability that our language may one 
day be broken into a variety of provincialisms, as is common with 
the language of other countries.’’ To secure uniformity, one must 
have a “system” of pronunciation, and Cummings accepts Walker, 
because ‘‘at present there can scarcely exist a doubt” that Walker’s 
system is the best. Rather than be divided among themselves, 
Americans like Cummings were willing to impose upon themselves 
inflexible British authority. 

“Tt is an important object, in this country,” said Webster, Ele- 
mentary Spelling Book, New York, 1848, on one of the fly leaves, 
“to have a uniform national language, to which all foreigners settling 
in this country, should conform.’ ‘In the early years of our in- 
dependence,” continues Webster with his usual modesty, ‘much 
was done to promote this object by Webster’s Spelling Book .. . 
and the effects of the general use of Webster’s book, for more than 
thirty years, are visible at this day, in the remarkable uniformity 
of pronunciation among the citizens of the United States.’’ One 
may doubt that this uniformity, if it existed, was so exclusively to 
be attributed to Webster’s Spelling Book, and Webster himself in 
this same passage, notes with approval a discovery he made on 
the occasion of his visit to England, “that pronunciation in England 
is not regulated by books, or by any book, but by the usage of the 
higher classes of society.” 

As time has passed, the claim of any higher class, or any local 
standard, for example that of New England, has had increasingly 
less chance of receiving general acceptance in America. Perhaps 
there is, or at least has been, a tendency for the West to look up to 
the East in matters of speech, as newer communites are always 
inclined to look with respect upon the traditions of older settled 
regions. But the terms West and East are confessedly vague—no 
one knows where the West begins—and the respect of the West for 
the East is a sentiment which is likely to pass unchallenged only 
when it is not brought into too close relation to concrete action. 
The threefold requirement that good American English must be 
present English, national English, and reputable English, good 


18 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


repute being defined in terms of educational standards, has not only 
passed into a truism of the rhetorics and guide-books which abound 
for the direction of American students, but it has become, one may 
say, an element in the sub-conscious life of the language. The 
prescription was old, as old at least as Campbell’s Rhetoric, and 
even the phrasing of it which has passed current in America was 
borrowed from England. ‘‘That usage,” says Creighton, Dictionary 
of Scripture Proper Names, p. 21, quoting from Crombie’s Etymology 
and Syntax (1802), ‘‘which gives law to language and which is gener- 
ally denominated good, must be reputable, national, and present.” 
This was the conventional way of stating the point as it was estab- 
lished by Campbell. But the difference between this statement 
as applied to England and as applied to America is that it has meant 
a great deal more for America than it has for England. 

The result in America has not been to destroy existing distinctions 
in local speeches or to prevent new ones from developing as new 
conditions have arisen, but rather to put all local distinctions on the 
same level as compared with the general standard speech. In the 
latter, because of the definiteness of the standard, an astonishing 
degree of uniformity has developed, and cultivated speakers who 
have given any thought to the matter of standards and who have 
not wilfully retained their local customs of speech, even in their 
own localities speak and write a language which is but slightly 
differentiated from that of other regions, whether the locality be 
on the Atlantic or Pacific coast, whether it border on the Great Lakes 
or the Gulf of Mexico. As compared with the language of most 
countries, national uniformity and the striving towards national 
uniformity may certainly be regarded as one of the notable char- 
acteristics of the American mother tongue. 

The modifications of the ideal of a general national standard 
which have just been made are, however, far from being unimportant. 
Though no local dialect presumes to take upon itself the authority 
of general standard, many local dialects are regarded not without 
honor in their own communities and are used by many speakers of 
cultivation without apology and even with pride. This must neces- 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 19 


sarily be so, since a citizen of a federated nation must first be a 
member of some local community, and only on special occasions 
will he be called upon to put aside his local customs and duties in 
favor of more general and abstract national demands. It results, 
therefore, that many features of local dialects have what may be 
called a very high local standard value as the speech of cultivated 
persons, and that the contentment and satisfaction of the several 
communities in their local speech has, in each case, a claim to tolera- 
tion which can be set aside neither by the claims of the national 
standard nor those of any differing local standard. In a democratic 
society there is always a tendency towards disintegration, and this 
tendency has been, and still is plainly exhibited in American speech. 


National standards, conscious or sub-conscious, manifestly can- 
not be manufactured out of whole cloth. They must have a con- 
siderable foundation in common experience before they can be made 
to seem effective as general guides to conduct. In spite of the theo- 
retical rejection of a local culture or a local speech as affording an 
adequate national standard, it remains true that the culture of New 
England, and to a less degree, the speech of New England, have 
most fully represented to Americans, viewing themselves historically, 
the aspirations of the country at large. It will be interesting to 
examine the reasons why New England speech should have been 
exalted to this position of theoretical prominence. 

In the first place, the speech of New England started with a 
strong initial advantage in that the colloquial idiom of the New 
England colonists was in large measure that of southeastern England 
and of London. ‘‘To prove that the Americans have a corrupt 
pronunciation,’ wrote Webster, Dissertations, p. 127, note, ‘‘we 
are often told that our ancestors came from the western counties 
of England.” ‘‘This is but partly true,” he continues, and he main- 
tained that ‘“‘many of the principal settlers came from London and 
its vicinity, some from the middle counties ... and a few from 
the northern counties.’”’ Other evidence of various kinds confirms 
Webster’s statement. The New England colonists gladly and 


20 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


rightly thought of themselves as a stream issuing from the central 
fountains of English life. 

Narrow patriots might maintain with all the passion they could 
muster that the new country must detach itself completely from 
the culture of the mother country, but their contention proved vain. 
There was something stronger than theories of government, and that 
was the bond which intimate social tradition establishes, the kin- 
ship of blood, of speech and of sentiment which cannot be set aside 
by decree or by intention. In moments of exalted feeling Americans 
sometimes declared their complete emancipation from British stand- 
ards, but in reality they had no desire to forego their ancient inherit- 
ance. Webster himself was proud of the fact that his fellow-New 
Englanders spoke, as he thought, the language which Britain had 
established as its approved refined and literary speech. Had the 
New England colonists come mainly from Yorkshire or from Scot- 
land, or from the western counties, and had their familiar speech 
thus been one of the northern dialects of English or of Somerset, it 
is doubtful if New England speech would ever have been taken into 
critical favor. But fortunately, it, agreed in the main with the 
generally accepted cultivated standard in Great Britain, and was 
thus spared the struggle which any contemned local dialect must 
have undergone in the endeavor to establish itself in opposition to 
the powerful influence of the speech of London and southern England. 
Moreover, the speech of the New England colonists thus stood in 
fairly close relations to that of the southern, especially the tide- 
water Virginian colonists. To a certain degree the Virginian colon- 
ists represented a different social class from that of New England. 
The organizers of this Virginian colony stood in more intimate rela- 
tions to the higher official life of England than did the founders of 
the New England colonies. They were perhaps to a greater extent 
men of the world, gentlemen and younger sons of gentlemen, and 
as such could not have viewed with favor any speech which deviated 
widely from the customs of the court speech with which they had 
been familiar in their own group. For reasons peculiar to its own 
life, Virginia exerted a less general and less energetic influence than 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 21 


New England upon American social customs in their earlier forma- 
tive and expanding period. But again the character of New England 
speech saved it from a stronger opposition than that which it would 
have been compelled to meet had it been a less respectable dialect 
than the one current among the settlers of Virginia. 

New England standing thus close to Old England has always 
held an honored place in American opinion as the transmitter of a 
highly prized race tradition. As time has passed, British and Ameri- 
can English, at those points where they came in contact, which 
would obviously be mainly in the printed and literary language, 
have drawn close to each other and have not fulfilled the early proph- 
ecies that the two languages would drift far apart. Among those 
who have given any thought to the matter, there has rarely been 
one who had any desire, whether in New England or elsewhere in 
America, to make of American English a separate speech. Occa- 
sional theorists, like Walt Whitman, in his American Primer, written 
about 1850, have proposed that ‘‘the etiquette of saloons” should 
be “discharged from that great thing, the renovated English speech 
in America.” Whitman, however, did scarcely more than express 
this desire, and few other theorists who have agreed with him have 
done much more. When it came to the actual use of the language 
for literary purposes, Whitman could not forget ‘‘the etiquette of 
saloons,” the cultivated tradition of the past. There have been 
undoubtedly extremists in both directions, those who would altogether 
reject British English, and those who would prescribe it as a refined 
and inescapable necessity. But the American attitude in the main 
has stood halfway between these extremes. Though there has 
been little direct knowledge of British English among Americans, 
there has been no eager desire to escape from it, no scorn or con- 
tempt for it. On the contrary, perhaps there has been too much 
acquiescence on the part of the average American in the opinion 
that British speech, in some undefined way, is better than American 
speech, that the Britisher has a native right in the language which 
the American enjoys only by favor of the original proprietors. This 
provincial feeling towards England has been stronger in New England 


22 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


than in the rest of the country, because in the rest of the country, 
New England in large degree has taken the place of Old England. 
The ‘‘muscular classes,” ‘‘the young men of These States,” when 
they turn their attention from sport and business to culture are 
much inclined to look elsewhere than at home for what they are 
seeking. They look to New England for the remote and perfect 
English, if not to practice it, at least to admire it; or if New England 
is home, even if Boston is home, a still more perfect perfection may 
be sought beneath the shadow of St. James. In the quest for cul- 
ture, it has sometimes been found difficult, even by sensible persons, 
to draw the line at the right point between sound respect for tradi- 
tion and abject provincialism. There is consolation, however, in 
reflecting that only a violent radicalism in American speech could 
have saved it from any appearance of provincialism. 


In general, the relatively compact and highly organized social 
life which developed early in the northern colonies gave to the ideas 
prevalent in New England an exceptional carrying power. Several 
of these ideas, whether we look upon them as spreading from New 
England or only as typically represented there, have been of very 
great significance in determining the feeling of Americans for their 
mother tongue, and these call for further examination. 

One of these characteristically American ideas was that of the 
equality of social rank. Great differences of rank did not exist in 
New England. Ministers, lawyers, teachers, and doctors stood 
slightly above the average level, but the learned professions were 
recruited directly from the populace, who felt themselves inferior 
to none. Webster bids Englishmen take notice that the ‘‘ American 
yeomanry’”’ are not to be compared to the ‘“‘illiterate peasantry” of 
their own country. ‘‘The yeomanry of this country consist of sub- 
stantial independent free-holders, masters of their own persons and 
lords of their own soil,’ Dissertations, p. 288. Among this yeomanry, 
certain of the finer interests were cultivated with enthusiasm. It is 
true that the imagination had little play, whether in poetry, or 
painting, or music, or prose narrative, or drama. The arts cultivated 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 23 


were those of a relatively intellectual or practical character, but 
owing just to this limitation, they were arts within the reach of all 
members of the community. Whatever culture existed was acces- 
sible to all. Timothy Dwight, Travels, I, 302, gives an engaging 
picture of New England, the whole country covered with villages, 
and every village with its church and ‘suit of schools.” ‘Nearly 
every child,’ he continues, ‘‘even those of beggars and blacks in 
considerable numbers, can read, write, and keep accounts. All the 
people are neighbors; social beings, converse; feel; sympathize; 
mingle minds; cherish sentiments; and are subjects of at least some 
degree of refinement.’ In his generous description of the people of 
New England, Cooper declares, Notions, I, 94, that ‘‘beyond a doubt 
nowhere is to be found a population as well instructed, in elementary 
knowledge, as the people of these six States.’’ ‘It is equally true,” 
he added, ‘“‘that I have nowhere witnessed such an universality of 
that self-respect which preserves men from moral degradation.” 
These statements are all the more significant as coming from one 
who was not a native of the region described, indeed was not an 
ardent lover of it. 

In hill town and valley town, upon the coast and in the interior, 
a remarkably homogeneous civilization developed. Now that so 
much of this has passed away, the modern student is constantly sur- 
prised to find in what out-of-the-way places printing-presses flour- 
ished in New England, how abundant books once were where now 
no books are found at all. ‘‘I am acquainted,” wrote Webster, 
Essays, Boston, 1790, p. 339, in the reformed spelling which he at 
this time affected, ‘‘with parishes, where almost every householder 
haz red the works of Addison, Sherlock, Atterbury, Watts, Young, 
and other similar writings; and will converse handsomely on the 
subjects of which they treet.” If this sounds a little like Yankee 
self-esteem, it can be confirmed by Cooper, Notions, I, 97, who 
remembered that copies of standard English authors were repeatedly 
to be found ‘“‘in retired dwellings where one would not expect to meet 
any production of a cast higher than an almanac, or a horn-book.”’ 
Webster calls attention also to the common custom of establishing 


24 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


parish libraries, the progenitors of the later public libraries, which 
were supported by subscription. He notes as of similar significance 
the relatively greater extent to which newspapers were circulated 
in New England as compared with other sections of the country. 
In the year 1785 he found the number in Connecticut alone ‘‘to be 
neerly eight thousand; which waz equal to that published in the 
whole territory, south of Philadelphia.” 1 


The two binding institutions which most effectively held together 
the elements of the democratic social life of early New England 
were the church and the district school. Every village of any size 
had its own church and its own resident minister or clergyman. 
Living in direct contact with the people and delivering sermons as 
they did with unflagging assiduity, the clergy exerted a powerful 
influence in maintaining the intellectual tone of the life of their 
respective communities. It was, moreover, not a popular but a 
learned clergy whose voices were heard in the New England meeting 
houses. In the earlier years of the colonies, there was some danger 
that the church might successfully assume a kind of autocratic and 
Calvinistic authority which would have made of it merely a stern 
judge and lawgiver, exalted above the familiar life of the people. 
By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the character of the 
New England ministry had undergone a change. The extremes of 
early Puritan doctrine and discipline had been modified, the church 
had been compelled to give up its hold upon civil affairs, and the 
church as a whole had become a more democratic social institution 
than the early church promised to be. It would be stretching the 
point perhaps too far to say that the growth of church life in America 
has been determined by the church in New England as its origin 
and point of departure. Too many other elements have entered 
since the colonial period which found no part in the New England 
church to permit of so simple a disposition of the matter. But it 
is true that the general character of the congregations and churches 


1 Hssays, p. 338. He refers to weekly papers, and evidently to the number of 
copies issued, not to different newspapers. 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 25 


as they have developed their organizations throughout the country 
has remained essentially the same. No branch of the church has 
assumed or even vigorously attempted to assume the position of an 
authorized or established church. As divisions and sects multiplied, 
it became manifestly absurd for any one branch of the church to 
claim authority as the sole accredited conserver of religious truth. 
The very independence which led to the organization of the early 
Puritan church led also to separation from it, and in the end to 
toleration of Quaker, Baptist, Methodist, or any other kind of doc- 
trine or organization which it might suit the fancy of any group of 
citizens to support. Here again one may note the powerful disinte- 
grating tendencies of democracy, if not upon the essential purposes 
for which the church exists, at least upon the manner of its organi- 
zation. Differentiation results, however, only from difference of 
opinion and the discussion which difference of opinion generates. 
It would be difficult to show in detail that American speech has been 
directly affected by the popular nature of the American church. 
One may point out, however, that the various churches in America 
have never been degraded to a place of social inferiority by contrast 
to any official church, that they have always been a very direct 
expression of a general will in the communities which support them 
and have thus responded to the community’s sense of propriety and 
dignity. The American public has ever been church-going and has 
participated actively in the conduct of its churches. The indirect 
influence which the church has exerted upon speech and the feeling 
for speech, as upon other social customs, one may suppose to have 
thus been considerable, and many a community which has had no 
other means of formulating its ideals of proper convention and 
refinement has been enabled to do this with more or less effect through 
its churches. The church has been the guardian of respectability 
in America, and in matters of speech, if its influence has not been 
exalted, it has at least tended to counteract the tendency toward 
the crudely familiar and local which is always likely to become 
unduly prominent in a mixed and democratic society. 


26 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Still more significant than the church, both for its own local 
community and as a tradition passed on to other large sections of 
the country, was the New England interest in education. Though 
other regions of colonial America did not altogether neglect the 
subject, nowhere was it a matter of such concern and respectful 
attention as in the two northern mother colonies, Massachusetts and 
Connecticut. In this region a complete system of education was 
provided from the primary school to the university, one which was 
thus adequate for all the needs of the community. Cooper remarks, 
Notions, II, 96, that ‘“‘the gentlemen of the middle and southern 
States, before the revolution, were very generally educated in Eng- 
land,” and that after the Revolution, lacking higher schools of their 
own, the middle and southern States for a time fared badly in the 
matter of higher instruction. But in New England the two uni- 
versities were early established and uninterruptedly met the demand 
for advanced scholarly and professional training. Elementary in- 
struction also was an essential part of the New England scheme 
of things, sometimes grudgingly provided for, but never completely 
neglected, even in the rough period of the earliest colonization. 

At first the school was an appendage of the Puritan church, not 
of equal rank with it, but a handmaiden to assist the church in pre- 
serving its stores of knowledge from the attacks of ‘“‘that old deluder 
Satan” and from the corruptions which the ‘‘false glosses of saint- 
seeming deceivers”’ might bring about, Updegraff, The Origin of the 
Moving School in Massachusetts, p. 52. The Puritan church exerted 
a minute and strong control over its schools, and wherever the church 
went, the school went with it. By a law of 1647 it was ordered in 
the colony of Massachusetts that every township, ‘‘after the Lord 
hath increased them to the number of fifty house-holders, shall then 
forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children 
as shall resort to him to write and read.”’ The records of early New 
England towns are full of accounts of “visitations” by the select- 
men of the town on those heads of families in the town who were 
reputed to be slack in the matter of putting their children to school. 
And it was further ordered that ‘‘where any town shall increase to 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 27 


the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set 
up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth, 
so far as they may be fitted, for the university,’ Updegraff, p. 52; 
Mathews, The Expansion of New England, p. 39. Failure to meet 
these requirements was punishable by fine. Every child was re- 
quired by the church to receive at least elementary instruction, 
either at home or in the elementary schools. Supplementing the 
lower schools came in time numberless local academies and grammar 
schools, and at the top the colleges and the two universities. The 
New England town revolved about its church, its school, and its 
academy or college. 

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, however, the hold 
of the church upon its schools was relaxed, and with the separation 
of the church from civil affairs, the school ceased to be a function of 
the church and passed under the control of civil authority. The 
church school thus became the district school, conducted not in the 
interests of any ecclesiastical or other group except the community 
at large. In the period of transition, when the school was passing 
out of the hands of the church into the hands of the democratic 
people, there seems to have been a decline of interest in the schools. 
“The old sanction was gone and a new one had not as yet taken hold 
of the people with sufficient force to cause them to provide schools 
of their own initiative,’ Updegraff, p. 114. But this state of affairs 
was of brief duration, and by the end of the seventeenth century 
interest in the schools revived, and with the expansion of the popu- 
lation, the number of schools largely increased throughout New 
England. As colonists from Massachusetts established new com- 
munities elsewhere in New England, they carried with them their 
plans for the organization of schools, and always the ‘“‘civil school 
of the church-state had become the civil school of the civil state,” 
p. 117. Yankee education soon became a standard commodity of 
the country. The Yankee schoolmaster, like the Yankee pedlar, 
traveled everywhere, and wherever the Yankee pedlar went, the 
spelling-book went with him. It became as essential a part of the 
sustenance of all youth as their daily bread. In Woodworth’s 


28 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Forest Rose (1825), Jonathan, a Yankee storekeeper, tells what he 
has for sale: “‘Everything: whiskey, molasses, calicoes, spelling- 
books, and patent gridirons.”’ Halleck, Poetical Writings, p. 171, 
describes a typical Connecticut Yankee as “wandering through the 
Southern countries teaching the A B C from Webster’s spelling 
book.” 

In Connecticut, Webster records that ‘‘every town, or parish 
containing seventy householders, shall keep an English school at 
leest eleven months in a yeer; and towns containing a less number, 
at leest six months in a yeer,’’ Hssays, p. 337. The district schools 
were held during the winter, and in the summer, ‘‘a woman iz hired 
to teech small children, who are not fit for any kind of labor.” In 
the large towns, schools, either public or private, were kept the 
whole year, and in every county town, a grammar school was estab- 
lished by law. The striking thing about these schools is that they 
were common schools, open to all children of the community on 
equal terms and supported by public funds. Instruction in them 
was given in the simpler subjects, reading, writing, arithmetic, 
history and geography, and the schools were not regarded merely 
as propedeutics to colleges or the learned professions. They were 
devised to give all members of the community a foundation knowledge 
in their own language and history which might serve as the point 
of departure for higher studies, but which need not necessarily do so. 
They were devised to make citizens, not scholars. 

Webster notes with disapproval ‘‘a too general attention to the 
dead languages, with a neglect of our own,’ Essays, p. 3ff. He 
advocates little attention even for living languages other than English, 
for ‘‘men whose business is wholly domestic, have little or no use 
for any language but their own, much less for languages known 
only in books.”’ The masters in these schools, even of the humbler 
kind, were often graduates of the colleges who frequently used their 
teaching positions as stepping-stones towards one of the learned 
professions. Very many New Englanders of note in American 
history have been at one stage of their career teachers in the common 
schools, and the statement remains true even for the country at large. 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 29 


The schoolmaster occupied a respected social position in the com- 
munity, and Webster again comments on an interesting contrast 
between the state of affairs in New England and in the southern 
states. He points out that in the South ‘gentlemen of property, 
residing on their plantations at a distance from a village,’ will some- 
times procure private tutors for the younger members of their families. 
But these instructors, for the most part, must be ‘‘vagabonds,’’ as 
“the gentleman will not admit that a skoolmaster can be a gentle- 
man, in consequence of which opinion, most or all teechers are ex- 
cluded from genteel company.” An exception is noted, however, 
in the case of grammar masters, ‘“‘for a man who can teech Latin, 
they suppose, may be a decent man, and fit for gentlemen’s com- 
_ pany,’”’ Essays, p. 362. 

To attempt to trace in detail the influence of the New England 
school upon the system of public school instruction as it has devel- 
oped throughout the country would be a large and complicated 
task. As the system has grown, many compromises with the New 
England system, and additions to it, have been made. But the 
essentials have not changed. The common school, with English 
as the basis of its training, is a necessary part of the life of every 
American community, not only in those regions which were settled 
by New Englanders, but even in regions remote from such direct 
influence. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the effect 
which these schools have had in the gradual process of realizing that 
ideal of a national speech which the country holds as its standard. 
English has been for a century and more the backbone of popular 
instruction in the common schools. At times it may have lost itself 
in futile exercises in grammar and parsing, but defects of pedagogic 
method have never obscured the aim of instruction in the native 
speech, which has been to correct illiteracy and to replace provincial- 
ism by something approximating general custom in speech. The 
process still continues, complicated by the presence in the schools, 
not only of Americans of different social and local origins, but in 
many schools also by the presence of large numbers of children of 
foreign birth. Though the results accomplished fall short of the 


30 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


ideal, when one measures these. results not by the test of the ideal 
but by the test of what has been practically achieved with the hetero- 
geneous material that has poured into the schools, the results cer- 
tainly justify the efforts that have been put forth to attain them. 
Few children leave the public schools without at least a vision of 
the meaning of standard and literary English. The vision may 
later become obscured and some students may fall back to the level 
of provincial and illiterate English, but it does not seem that this is 
generally or frequently the case. Later habits, in business, in 
social intercourse, in further academic training for the fortunate 
few, tend to confirm the habits already formed. It is still possible 
to compare an older generation in some communities which had 
but little ‘‘schooling,”’ with a new generation that has passed through 
the elementary schools, or through both elementary and high school, 
and the two generations, so far at least as speech is concerned, quite 
obviously belong to different levels of culture. Whether or not 
the new generation stands on a higher level of culture altogether 
than the old may be a matter of opinion affected by a variety of 
considerations. But the culture of the new generation is at least 
normalized and socialized to a dégree which would have been im- 
possible if it had not experienced the discipline which the common 
schools provide. This process has been going on for eight or nine 
generations. It was the possibility of this kind of discipline which 
has been the significant contribution of the New England school to 
the development of American speech. Among all the centrifugal 
tendencies of democratic American society, none has exerted a more 
powerful centralizing effect than the public schools. 


A third characteristic New England institution, the town meet- 
ing, has maintained itself with remarkable vitality upon the soil of 
New England, but so far as it was transmitted to other regions, it 
has been so completely merged into different customs as largely 
to have lost its identity. When the early emigrants passed from 
their old homes in Massachusetts and Connecticut into New York, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio and other parts of the Northwest Territory, 


THE MOTHER TONGUE jl 


they carried with them their town meeting and for a time this institu- 
tion flourished in regions where it is now unknown. It was not, 
however, practically adapted to conditions in the new settlements, 
where the local political units were larger than they had been in 
the New England towns and where the settlers were scattered over 
a wide extent of territory. Moreover, as population increased, 
the town meeting became unwieldy. A group of fifty or a hundred 
householders might profitably come together to arrange the local 
affairs of the towns, but as the number grew from hundreds to thou- 
sands, representative government of the local communities became 
a necessity. Wherever it has flourished, however, the town meeting 
has been a notably democratic institution. The meeting was a 
place where every householder might freely express his opinion, 
and it may be noted that even in early New England, the liberties 
of the town meeting were wider than those of the general govern- 
ment of the colony. Only members of the church were admitted 
citizens or “freemen” of the colony, but every householder had a 
vote and a voice in his local meeting. 

As these town meetings were gatherings of equals, of neighbors 
and friends, to discuss and pass upon matters of very immediate 
and practical concern to all, they were not favorable training grounds 
for orators, and it does not seem that the town meetings were ever 
much inclined to encourage flights of eloquence. The orator can 
expand only when he has a large and helpless audience at his mercy. 
But the New England town community did not provide such an 
audience, nor was its business profitably to be transacted by means 
of speechifying. Dwight, Travels, I, 215, notes, in describing the 
Connecticut town meeting, that “the sober, busy citizens of Con- 
necticut are . . . very little inclined to commend, or even to listen 
to, the eloquence which is intended only for show. He who would 
be heard with approbation, or mentioned with praise, must speak 
only because there is occasion to speak, must speak with modesty, 
with brevity, to forward or improve the measures proposed, or those 
which he substitutes; and not to show that he can speak, however 
ingeniously.”’ The significance of the town meeting for the student 


32 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


of language lies in the fact that it provided a common meeting place 
for members of the community of varying social or local origin, 
where they might speak their minds as equals, and in the process, 
inevitably shape their speech, if peculiar, to bring it into conformity 
with the more or less recognized customs of the group. 


It would be an interesting subject of speculation whether or not 
the ideals represented in the life and social customs of New England 
would have been so widely influential in America if the population 
of New England had remained within its narrow geographical con- 
fines. The interest of the subject must be entirely speculative, 
however, since migration from New England began as soon as there 
was any wider America to affect and was itself the most significant 
single factor in the westward expansion of the country. In his 
famous account of the Yankees, Irving, Knickerbocker History, Book 
II, Chapter VIII, points out that to this “Arab of America” the 
notion of settling himself in the world meant “nothing more nor 
less than to begin his rambles.”’ In fact many of the very earliest 
settlers seem to have been restless persons, moving from one town 
to another often four or five times~’ At first migration within New 
England, that is from the mother country in Massachusetts to neigh- 
boring regions, could take place only with the consent of the church 
and under its constant inspection. These restrictions were soon 
thrown off, however, and the colonists moved freely, to Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and then out- 
side New England to New York and Pennsylvania. Commenting on 
the possibility of the disruption of the American confederation, 
Timothy Dwight, Travels, IV, 513, remarks that if this should take 
place, ‘‘ New-England and New-York will almost of course, be united 
in the same political body. The inhabitants are now substantially 
one people.”” From three-fifths to two-thirds of the inhabitants of 
New York State, he says, Travels, III, 252, originated from New 
England, and ‘‘the proportion is continually increasing. New York 
is, therefore, to be ultimately regarded as a colony from New 
England.” In New York and New England, Dwight found ‘‘the 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 33 


same interests of every kind inseparably united,’’ Travels, IV, 527. 
These statements will be somewhat qualified when we remember 
that Dwight’s impressions were derived mainly from travels in 
Central New York. In the Hudson Valley and in the neighborhood 
of New York City, New England influence was not so prominent. 
At the close of the Revolution and with the opening of the North- 
west Territory, the great tide of westward migration began. In 
the Western Reserve of Ohio a ‘second Connecticut”? came into 
being. At Marietta and at Granville the towns were born as full- 
fledged New England villages. What happened at these places, 
happened in scores and hundreds of other places throughout the 
Middle West. The migrations were not always direct from New 
England, for a dweller in Ohio may first have sojourned for a few 
years in New York or Pennsylvania before passing on to a new 
promised land. Where opportunities were many, it was easy for 
a settler to pick up his few portable belongings and set out for the 
better land that seemed always beckoning just a little beyond. On 
the whole, the New Englander seems to have had little of that feeling 
for ‘‘ancestral home”’ which was so marked a characteristi¢ among 
Southerners. But many of the more steady and prosperous members 
of the new settlements remained after the restless ones had departed 
and soon established centers of widely radiating influence. Another 
significant feature of New England migrations, which likewise dis- 
tinguishes them from the Southerner’s method of seeking new homes, 
was that of moving in groups. When Granville was settled in Ohio, 
the church was first organized in its old home in Granville, Massa- 
chusetts, and was transplanted with pastor, deacons, and members, 
to its new surroundings. The same thing happened in numberless 
instances, and to this day one finds communities, not only in the 
Northwest Territory, but across the Mississippi in Iowa and beyond, 
which often seem as much like New England as New England itself. 
The compact organization of these communities, and their skill in 
institutional administration acquired through long experience, made 
them exceptionally effective in drawing together and giving direction 
to the heterogeneous elements of which frontier society was composed. 


34. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


When one considers all these various streams of influence which 
have issued from New England and have irrigated the whole con- 
tinent of American spiritual life, one may be not unprepared to 
believe that American speech also is but a child of New England 
speech. But the respect which America has always had for New 
England has not carried with it unquestioning acceptance or imi- 
tation of all New England customs. One may admire without 
exactly copying, and it must be said with respect to New England 
that its influence in America has been in determining the tone and 
aspirations of American life, not in establishing the detailed practices 
of American social habits and customs. Thus in the matter of 
speech, ever since students began to take a critical interest in the 
subject,.New England speech in the rest of the country has been 
felt to be distinctly local, often rustic and provincial. 

One of the first local types of character to appear in American 
literature was the comic New England native, with his numerous 
and strange but mild expletives, his vocabulary rude and doric, his 
drawl and twang. With all his respect for New England, Cooper 
thought, Notions, II, 1380, that the best English in America was 
spoken ‘‘by the natives of the middle States, who are purely the 
descendants of English parents, without being the descendants 
of emigrants from New England.” The provincialisms of New 
England, as Cooper heard them, consisted of intonations, pronun- 
clations, and meanings of words, and he mentioned some eight or 
ten details of this sort. Yet he concluded that with these few 
exceptions, ‘‘the people of New England speak the language more 
like the people of Old England than any other parts of our coun- 
try’’—a statement of the case which most persons would agree to 
even to-day. But this very similarity of the speech of New England 
to the speech of Old England has been one of the things which has 
marked New England speech as provincial, or at least as different, 
when it has been compared with the speech of the rest of the 
country. 

Because of its geographical position, New England from the 
start tended to become detached from the rest of the country. The 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 35 


center neither of American political nor of American commercial 
activity was ever in New England, and intellectual leadership, always 
open to doubts and dissensions, was but a poor substitute for these 
as a practical carrying power. Furthermore it must be remembered 
that the speech of New England was not itself uniform. When one 
thinks of the leadership of New England, one usually thinks of 
Hastern Massachusetts, and it is the speech of this region which cor- 
responds to the type commonly known as New England speech. 
Yet none of the distinctive marks of the pronunciation of Eastern 
Massachusetts has been transferred from that region to the whole 
country. The pronunciation of a in path, calf, dance, etc. as [a1], 
of o in hot, pod, etc., as [9], of part, heart, etc. as [part], [ha:t], etc., 
of o in stone, home, etc. as an unrounded shortened vowel, popularly 
written stun, hum, these have become universal neither in the whole 
of New England nor in the rest of the country. They are familiar 
to all persons who take any interest in matters of speech, but this 
familiarity has not led to an acceptance of them in practice. Even 
communities which through immigration are mainly of New England 
origin soon ceased to be distinctively like New England in speech. If 
one were seeking for what is commonly apprehended as the general 
type of American speech one would not seek for it in New England, 
but somewhere between the Alleghanies and the Rockies. Or per- 
haps one may phrase the point better by saying that if two cultivated 
speakers, one from Nebraska and one from Eastern Massachusetts 
were both asked to discard those features in their speech which seemed 
to them to bear distinctive local color, the speaker from Eastern 
Massachusetts would in most cases have to yield more than the 
speaker from Nebraska. 

One may say that in America three main types of speech have 
come to be recognized, a New England local type, a Southern local 
type, and a general or Western speech covering the rest of the coun- 
try, and also all speakers in New England and the South at the 
moments when their speech is not local in character. This general 
speech has been the result of a great variety of influences, the most 
important probably being the mixed racial and local origin of the 


36 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


people among whom it has arisen. In this mixture of races the 
foreign element seems not to have affected American speech in any 
great degree, but the mingling of Scotch and Irish and of English- 
men from the north as well as the south of England has been of the 
greatest importance. The resultant speech is one which stands in 
many significant respects closer to the speech of central and northern 
England than it does to that of southern England, and by conse- 
quence, to that of Eastern Massachusetts. This threefold division 
in American speech is a matter of common though not always of 
clearly analyzable feeling on the part of Americans. Merely as a 
fact of pragmatic experience, the average American realizes three 
large and representative types of speech which he ordinarily desig- 
nates as Eastern, Western, and Southern. He may realize also a 
number of other less extensive local types, but there is no other type 
which he would be inclined to place upon the same level as these 
three in comprehensiveness and in significance. The geographical 
terms, Eastern, Western and Southern, are commonly used, to be 
sure, without any implications of clearly defined geographical bounda- 
ries between the several types of speech. Neither is it ordinarily 
implied by this use of terms that all speakers in any community 
speak uniformly. It is recognized that there may be as much dif- 
ference between a speaker from Eastern Massachusetts and one from 
Western Connecticut as between one from Eastern Massachusetts and 
one from Ohio. The terms Eastern, Southern, and Western are merely 
used to designate several types of speech which, though not finally 
and scientifically differentiated either socially or geographically in the 
popular mind, are nevertheless in practice distinguishable in the 
experience of every observant American. 

The details of speech which occasion this feeling of difference 
are usually details of pronunciation and intonation, less often details 
of vocabulary. So far as vocabulary is concerned, the speech of all 
educated persons in America is remarkably uniform. One may 
occasionally observe a word which by its meaning reveals a local 
custom, as when one gives the words evening or gallery the Southern 
senses of afternoon or porch, or when one calls the enclosure around 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 37 


a house, as they do in New England, a door-yard, or calls a farm a 
ranch, as they do in the Far West. But the occasions for expressing 
the ideas which may call for the use of peculiarly local words are 
obviously less frequent and therefore less revealing than pronunci- 
ations, or cadences, which affect all words, whether they are local or 
not. Moreover, the conventional spelling of modern English, though 
it is adequate to universalize vocabulary through the printed pages 
of books, magazines and newspapers, by the very fact that it is 
conventional is made powerless to normalize pronunciation or to 
prevent increasing differentiation in it. 

Some of the more distinctive marks of difference in the pronun- 
ciation of American English may be briefly summarized as providing 
the clues by which one recognizes the several large types of American 
speech. These types may be most conveniently designated in the 
terminology commonly current as the Eastern, the Southern, and 
the Western, or General types. Further historical and descriptive 
details concerning the sounds here tabulated will be found under the 
discussion of the several sounds in a later chapter. They are pre- 
sented now merely as elements in the general background of feeling 
for the mother tongue. It is perhaps not necessary to point out 
that a sound posited as characteristic of a certain type of speech is 
not necessarily peculiar to that type. The quality of a style of 
speech is determined by the combination of characteristics which 
it exhibits as well as by the characteristics in themselves. 

The most distinctive and generally recognized marks of the East- 
ern type of American speech are: 

(1) loss of r [r] before consonants and finally 

(2) tendency to pronounce a before [f] [s] [6] [ns], etc., as [a:]. 
Though by no means universal throughout New England and the 
East, this pronunciation has established itself as one of the com- 
monly accepted features of the Eastern type of American speech. 

(3) tendency to pronounce o as [a] in closed syllables in which 
the vowel is followed by a stop consonant, as in hot, rock, drop, etc. 

(4) tendency to pronounce 0, ou, as [91] in court, port, more, etc., 
with the r of course lost in pronunciation. 


38 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


(5) tendency to pronounce w as [u:] in words like duty, tune, 
mature, etc. This pronunciation is not uniform in Eastern pro- 
nunciation, but is more frequent there than in Southern or General 
American English. In earlier periods and in present rustic New 
England speech, it resulted in the pronunciation of ¢ as [t] instead 
of [t§] in words like nature, creature, etc., popularly spelled nater, 
natur, critter, creatur, etc. This latter pronunciation has completely 
disappeared from cultivated New England speech, but it lingers in 
popular tradition. 

(6) the pronunciation of the vowel of stone, home, whole, etc., 
shorter and less round than it is elsewhere pronounced, a sound 
popularly represented by the dialect spellings, stun, hum, hull, ete. 
This pronunciation is disappearing from cultivated speech and in 
many words has completely disappeared, though it is still not in- 
frequent in others. In 1889, Professor Grandgent bore evidence 
that in his pronunciation whole and hull were very slightly different, 
much to the surprise of James Russell Lowell, to whom it seemed 
that ‘‘the short o which you get in whole is the rustic pronunciation 
and that whole is the urban pronunciation,” see Publications of the 
Modern Language Association, V, XXXVI. Cultivated usage was 
probably more divided in the pronunciation of this particular word 
thirty years ago than it is now, but in other words, as in Holmes, 
colt, coat, etc., a pronunciation with a short and very slightly rounded 
o remains in cultivated eastern New England speech. In Phyfe, 
18,000 Words Often Mispronounced, the o of only, whole, wholly, is 
marked as being properly halfway between the o of odd and the o of 
old, and as being frequently, and incorrectly, confounded with this 
latter sound. 

(7) tendency to pronounce final unstressed a in such a way as to 
produce the acoustic impression of [r] as in zdea, Hannah, etc., rep- 
resented in popular dialect spelling by idear, Hanner, etc. 

Some distinctive and generally recognized marks of the Southern 
type of American English are: 

(1) loss of [r] before consonants and finally. 

(2) a pronounced as [x] before [f], [s], [@], [ns], ete. In Eastern 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 39 


Virginia, words of this type have ‘‘two equally authorized standard 
pronunciations,” one with [s], the other with [a:]; both of these are 
traditional ‘‘in certain of the best families,’ and they are sharply 
divided “‘on the same lines among the lower classes,’”’ Primer, Pro- 
nunciation of Fredericksburg, Va., p. 196. But aside from these 
survivals of [a:] in Eastern Virginia, the normal pronunciation is 
[2] in the South. Eastern Virginia and Eastern New England both 
had the pronunciation [a:] by inheritance from the same source, 
and of course also the pronunciation [sz]. Self-conscious New Eng- 
land speech, however, which we have called the Eastern type of 
American English, established the pronunciation [a:] as desirable 
and to be imitated in a way which was not possible in the less highly 
organized and critical South. The South thus tends toward the 
pronunciation of the General type in these words, and New England 
towards the Eastern type. In Thomas Nelson Page’s In Ole Vir- 
ginta the old-fashioned negro body servant in Marse Chan regu- 
larly has [a:] as in New England speech, but the author remarks 
in a prefatory note to the volume that ‘‘the dialect of the ne- 
groes of Eastern Virginia differs totally from that of the Southern 
negroes.”’ 

(3) tendency to pronounce o as [a] in hot, got, lot, etc. 

(4) tendency to pronounce wu as [jut] in duty, tune, mature, etc. 

(5) tendency to preserve in approved local standard use pro- 
nunciations different from those of general standard American use, 
for example, the Virginia [’gja:dn] for garden; the Georgian, Ala- 
bamian, and Mississippian [’tints], [min], for tennis, men; the very 
general Southern diphthong [seu] for [au] as in down, town, etc.; the 
pronunciation of words like ear, hear, here, deer, dear, etc., with the 
same vowel as that which appears in General American hare, dare, 
tear (verb), etc.; the pronunciation of au in words like haunt, jaunt, 
gaunt, as [ee], [z1], see Primer, Pronunciation of Fredericksburg, Va., 
p. 196. These pronunciations are all survivals from older more 
general pronunciations, and though perhaps none of them can be 
taken as universally characteristic of Southern American, taken to- 
gether they establish the position that Southern American speech is 


40) THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


likely to be more archaic, and to the uncritical observer to seem more 
peculiar, than any other type of American speech. 

(6) tendency toward a lax articulation, especially of final con- 
sonants after continuants, as in land, first, pest, soft, etc. With this 
may perhaps be connected in general a soft and low timbre of voice 
and a relatively slow tempo in speech. 

(7) certain characteristic cadences, for example stressing the 
final instead of the second word in the phrase I think so. 

The distinctive and commonly accepted marks of the Western or 
General type of pronunciation are: 

(1) retention of r before consonants and finally, either as an 
audible [r], as in far, part, lord, etc., pronounced [far], [part], [Lord]; 
or as the reverted vowel [9] with the consonantal quality of the r 
sometimes remaining, sometimes disappearing, as in first, herd, 
hurt, etc., pronounced [farst], [herd], [hort], or [feist], [ho:d], [het]. 

(2) a pronounced as [x] before [f], [s], [6], [ns], etc.; and as [a:] 
only under Eastern influence. 

(3) o pronounced as [a] in hot, got, lot, ete. 

(4) a pronounced as [a] after [w], as in water, watch, etc., pro- 
nounced [’watar], [wat{], etc. 

(5) u pronounced either as [u:] or [jut], perhaps equally divided, 
in words like duty, tube, new, etc. 

(6) a greater amount of nasalization of vowels in the Western 
General type as contrasted with typically Eastern or Southern 
American speech. 

(7) a “hard” and ‘‘unmusical”’ quality of voice. 

It is obviously much easier for an American to call up in his 
mind a kind of image of the Eastern and Southern types of American 
speech than of the Western or General type. The reason for this 
is that the Western or General type is a composite type, more or less 
an abstraction of generalized national habits, whereas the Eastern 
and Southern types, in their most tangible and recognizable forms, 
developed at the first as the speech of definitely localized and highly 
characteristic social communities, and have remained so. The New 
England type of speech had for its center that life of Kastern Massa- 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 41 


chusetts and Connecticut which by the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury had passed out of experimental uncertainties into an organic 
social unity such as could have been found at no other place in the 
North at that time. The striking characteristic of the New England 
of the early colonists was its unity, but as soon as one stepped beyond 
the bounds of the original settlements, the striking characteristic of 
all communities was their heterogeneity. 

The same thing was true in the South. The earliest seventeenth- 
century settlers of tidewater Virginia were in general of the same 
kind. They all came at about the same time and with the same pur- 
poses. They developed their own civilization within their own limits 
and they gave to this civilization, by reason of its appreciable local 
color and social unity, a typical quality which to this day is the best 
expression of a kind of life in America which both the historical and 
the practical imagination love to dwell upon. The eastern Massa- 
chusetts towns and villages and the plantations of the James and 
Rappahannock established themselves as fixed but radiating centers 
for cultural influence before the great movements westward began 
and before the great tides of European immigration set in. The 
population of these two communities was relatively small, but their 
social significance has been great. This it is which has given to the 
speech of eastern Massachusetts its representative quality for the 
Eastern type of American speech, and to the speech of tidewater 
Virginia its representative quality for the Southern type of American 
speech. No other locality can be fixed upon as standing as indis- 
putably for the Western or General type of speech, as these two 
regions do for their own types. The reason is that the Western or 
General type did not assume its form in one locality. It does not 
belong to one locality, but to the nation as a whole. Manifestly 
what belongs to so heterogeneous a thing as the American nation as 
a whole must itself be heterogeneous. Such unity as it has is not 
slight, but it is not a unity which resulted from generations of life 
upon a circumscribed native soil, such as was the life of colonial 
Massachusetts and Virginia. The General type of American speech 
is therefore not racy of the soil of a particular locality, but if one may 


42 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


be permitted the tautology, it is racy of the life of the race. It has 
grown, and is growing, in a thousand different places, by mixture, 
by compromise, by imitation, by adaptation, by all the devices by 
which a changing people in changing circumstances adapt themselves 
to each other and to their new conditions. 


The provincialism or localism of New England, which was men- 
tioned above, affected the speech of New England itself in several 
ways. As a clearly defined local dialect developed in New England, 
the natives of this region, if their self-confidence had been sufficient, 
might have exalted their local dialect to a position of standard or 
literary authority. They might have rested content in it, or even 
have become proud of it, and as Dante established the dialect of 
Florence as a literary speech by writing in it, so some early New 
Englander of genius might have established the familiar speech of 
that community as the literary language of America by composing 
in it a great work expressive of the feeling for nationality in the new 
country. Some such aspiration was present in Webster’s mind in 
his endeavors to put on record what he called the American language. 
But like all educated persons, Webster did not really conceive the 
possibility of resting contentedly on the practices of popular speech as 
it existed among his own townsmen and neighbors. Before his eyes 
there always shone the ideal of a remote literary language, which was 
to be modified and perhaps enriched by incorporation within it of cer- 
tain local practices in speech, but which was not to be replaced by a 
new idiom. In consequence, the local speech tended to take on 
more and more the position of a homely dialect, and wherever sophis- 
tication flourished, an artificial speech tended to assume greater 
importance. 

Now it is characteristic of New England that it is to-day, and 
formerly was much more, a region of one city. Boston has always 
been so much more important than any other city of New England 
that it has been the preeminent leader in the expression of all urban 
refinements. Boston has been, so far as New England is concerned, 
the center of culture, and to the extent that New England may be 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 43 


taken for America as a whole, the center of American culture. This 
central position, however, has obviously been more important for 
New England than it has for the country as a whole. As cultural 
aspirations tended to become localized in Boston, the rest of the 
New England region tended to become more and more provincial. 
On the other hand, to save itself from being swallowed up by the 
surrounding ocean of provinciality, Boston was driven to cultivate 
the more strenuously those marks of distinction which glorified it 
as being different from the native simplicity by which it was sur- 
rounded. This was the light in which Boston and New England in 
their inter-actions appeared to Henry James, viewing them from 
the angle of New York and Europe in the sixth decade of the nine- 
teenth century. Here and there, says James, Notes of a Son and 
Brother, p. 350, were found personalities which exhibited ‘‘a state 
of provincialism rounded and compact, quite self-supporting, which 
gave it serenity and quality, something comparatively rich and 
urban.” But such personalities were comparatively rare. One gazed 
usually ‘‘straight into those depths of rusticity which more and more 
unmistakably underlay the social order at large and out of which one 
felt it to have emerged in any degree but at scattered points.”’ ‘‘Where 
it did emerge, I seemed to see,” the analysis continues, ‘‘it held itself 
as high as possible, conscious, panting, a little elate with the fact of 
having cleared its skirts, saved its life, consolidated its Boston, yet 
as with wastes unredeemed, roundabout it, propping up and pushing 
in—all so insistently that the light in which one for the most part 
considered the scene was strongly coloured by their action.” 

To save itself from the invading barbarism of provincial New 
England, Boston made a cult of culture itself, and in nothing more 
strenuously than in speech. The American schools of elocution, 
oratory and vocal expression, now abundant and ubiquitous in the 
land, are a gift from Boston to the rest of the country. But as soon 
as one stepped out of this magic circle of cultivated Boston speech 
into what one may perhaps call natural and familiar New England 
speech, one immediately descended to the regions of the rustic and 
provincial. How tantalizingly near this rustic native speech lay to 


44 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


the cultivated speech is evidenced by the use of the native speech 
which was made by writers like Holmes, Lowell, and others, who 
endeavored to express homespun character in homespun speech. 
Though this native speech was felt to be vigorously expressive, may 
even have been felt to be the real speech of New England, yet it was 
always used with a reluctant admission that the reality was not good 
enough for the highest purposes. It is doubtful, however, if Lowell 
ever expressed himself more sincerely than he did in the Biglow 
Papers, and time and again in Holmes, when he good-humoredly 
permits himself to forget the literary pose, glimpses of the essentially 
local, provincial New Englander, wise, kindly, and simple, show in 
the language he uses. This sense for double personality has existed 
nowhere else in the country so completely asin New England. Local 
dialects of course exist everywhere, but supplementing the General 
or Western type of speech there is no dialect speech which expresses 
familiar reality as the rustic dialect of New England supplements the 
refined dialect of Boston. Infact when writers elsewhere have written 
in dialect, they have always written in what is but a very slightly 
modified form of rustic New England dialect. 

To detach itself more effectively from the hinterland of rustic 
New England, it was natural for Boston to strengthen the bonds 
which united Boston and England. The relatively close connection 
between the speech of Boston and the speech of England was noted 
as early as the latter eighteenth century, when Dwight, Travels, I, 
465, remarked that the people of Boston ‘‘with a very small number 
of exceptions . . . speak the English language in the English man- 
ner.’ Since then many others have made similar observations. 
Boston is the only city in America in which boots is a common equiv- 
alent for shoes, calico for unbleached muslin, and shop a common 
name for store. In the mid-nineteenth century, according to many 
competent observers, the respect for things British in Boston might 
fairly be called a craze. It was Boston which in the sixties of the 
nineteenth century introduced to Americans ‘‘a new and romantic 
possibility”? in afternoon tea. ‘‘The tone of Boston society,” says 
Henry Adams, Education of Henry Adams, p. 19, speaking of this 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 45 


same period, “was colonial. The true Bostonian always knelt in 
self-abasement before the majesty of English standards; far from 
conceding it as a weakness, he was proud of it as his strength.” 
Adams declares that almost alone among his Boston contempo- 
raries, he was not English in feeling or in sympathies. 

It will be readily understood that when Adams speaks of his 
Boston contemporaries, he by no means signifies all Boston. ‘True 
Bostonians” constituted an inner and upper circle, entry into which 
was jealously guarded and rarely effected. Surrounding the “true 
Bostonians” there dwelt the world of ‘“‘blackguard Boston,’’ pre- 
sumably made up of all those ordinary citizens who might not aspire 
to be called true. By the middle of the nineteenth century, great 
numbers of Irish dwelt within the geographical limits of Boston, 
who assuredly did not kneel in self-abasement before the majesty of 
English standards. Boston, in the narrow sense, has come to be 
to the American a name for a state of mind, not for a civil organiza- 
tion or a local region. As a city, Boston was never entirely homo- 
geneous. But as an ideal, it realized itself in parts with remarkable 
clearness in the early and mid-nineteenth century. 

The effect of all this tradition and endeavor has been to place 
Boston in a peculiar position as compared with other seats of culture 
in the country. A community which claims for itself special dis- 
tinctions is likely in many instances to have these claims recognized, 
but is just as likely to arouse hostility and to have such claims 
denied. Perhaps most Americans interested in the criticism of 
American speech would agree, however, in regarding what is com- 
monly known as Bostonian English as exemplifying a special tech- 
nique in language, as skilled virtuosity rather than natural habit. 
The influence of this ideal has been for good in showing that speech 
may be cultivated as a fine art, but on the other hand not for good 
in deflecting attention and respect from native idiom to the acquire- 
ment of remote and artificial practices in speech. 


As a result of the circumstances under which it arose, the Ameri- 
can mother tongue, especially in its General type, has attained an 


46 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


unusual degree of currency. No American popular dialect, except 
perhaps that of some backward negro community or the speech of 
some geographically isolated groups of people, differs widely from 
cultivated speech. An unsophisticated native of no community in 
America would have much difficulty in understanding a native of 
any other, such, for example, as an unsophisticated native of York- 
shire might have in understanding one from Somerset. After noting 
that ‘educated American English is now almost entirely independent 
of British influence, and differs from it considerably, though as yet 
not enough to make the two dialects—American English and British 
English—mutually unintelligible,’ Sweet, New English Grammar, I, 
224 (1892), adds that ‘‘American English itself is beginning to split 
up into dialects.”’ But this latter statement shows a misunder- 
standing of the situation. The splitting up of American dialects is 
an ancient inheritance from British dialects, and the rifts have not 
increased, but have grown fewer and smaller on American soil. 

This tendency towards uniformity in American speech has long 
been noticed. President Witherspoon of Princeton, writing in 1784, 
Works, IV, 459, says that ‘“‘the vulgar in America speak much better 
than the vulgar in Great Britain, for a very obvious reason, viz. 
that being much more unsettled, and moving frequently from place 
to place, they are not so liable to local peculiarities, either in accent 
or phraseology. ‘There is a greater difference in dialect between one 
county and another in Britain, than there is between one state and 
another in America.’’ Describing the state of New Jersey, Works, 
IV, 407, he remarks that “‘ people from all the other states are con- 
tinually moving into and out of this state, so that there is little 
peculiarity of manner”; and commenting on local phrases and terms 
in general, Works, IV, 469, he observes that ‘“‘there is a much greater 
variety of these in Britain than in America,” and adds the more pen- 
etrating observation that ‘‘if there is a much greater number of local 
vulgarisms in Britain than America, there is also for this very rea- 
son, much less danger of their being used by gentlemen or scholars. 
It is implied in the very nature of the thing, that a local phrase will 
not be used by any but the inhabitants or natives of that part of the 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 47 


country where it prevails. However, I am of the opinion that even 
local vulgarisms find admission into the discourse of people of better 
rank more easily here than in England.’’ In other words, though 
Witherspoon would agree that speech was more uniform in America 
than in England, he believed also that the general level was lower. 
The question whether or not American speech would continue to be 
estimated by the British standard was one that Witherspoon left 
open, though he was inclined to think, Works, IV, 459, that ‘being 
entirely separated from Britain, we shall find some center or standard 
of our own, and not be subject to the inhabitants of that island, 
either in receiving new ways of speaking, or rejecting the old.”’ It is 
interesting to find opinions somewhat similar to these of Wither- 
spoon repeated by Marsh, Lectures (1860), p. 666, who remarks that 
“it is a trite observation that, though very few Americans speak as 
well as the educated classes of Englishmen, yet not only is the average 
of English used here, both in speaking and writing, better than 
that of the great mass of the English people; but there are fewer 
local peculiarities of form and articulation in our vast extent of 
territory than on the comparatively narrow soil of Britain. In spite 
of disturbing and distracting causes, English is more emphatically 
one in America than in its native land, and if we have engrafted on 
our mother-speech some widespread corruptions, we have very nearly 
freed the language, in our use of it, from some vulgar and disagreeable 
peculiarities exceedingly common in England.”’ 

Webster also bears witness to this uniformity in American speech, 
though this happy state he fears has been endangered by the publi- 
cation of conflicting but supposedly authoritative statements in 
dictionaries. ‘‘Before the publication of Sheridan’s Dictionary,’ he 
remarks, Compendious Dictionary (1806), p. xvi, “‘the pronunciation 
of words in the northern states of the United States was so uniform, 
that it is doubtful whether the gentlemen of education differed in 
fifty words; and this uniformity still exists, among those who have 
made no use of any standard author [by standard authors Webster 
means the standard dictionaries]. Yet the standard authors them- 
selves and those who follow them, differ in some thousands of words. 


48 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


It is further to be remarked that the common unadulterated pro- 
nunciation of the New England gentlemen is almost uniformly the 
pronunciation which prevailed in England anterior to Sheridan’s 
time, and which, I am assured by English gentlemen, is still the 
pronunciation of the body of the English nation: the pronunciation 
recommended by Sheridan and Walker being there called the London 
dialect, and considered as a corruption.’”’ Here as ever, Webster 
takes an exaggerated view of the effect of dictionaries upon the prac- 
tice of speech. The truth is that in this matter of uniformity in 
speech, very much depends upon the direction in which one turns 
the head. If one is looking for uniformity, one finds it easily, but 
if one looks for diversity, diversity will never be lacking. 


The question of the relative excellence of American English as 
compared with British English is also much dependent upon point 
of view, certainly is not susceptible of a positive and absolute answer. 
Expressions of opinion on this question have always been much 
colored by patriotic fervor or by prejudice. Early boasts on the 
part of Americans that the English language was spoken in a purer 
form in America than in England were numerous, though not more 
numerous than the scornful denials of this statement by Englishmen. 
When Sam Slick, Sayings and Doings (1836), Chapter XI, says that 
‘it’s generally allowed we [the Americans] speak English better than 
the British,” this is to be put down merely as humorous spread- 
eagleism. But when one meets in serious writing with a bald state- 
ment like this by Clapin, A New Dictionary of Americanisms, p. vi, 
that ‘‘as a matter of fact and as regards the great bulk of the people 
of the United States, there can be no question but that they speak 
purer and more idiomatic English than do the masses in the Old — 
Country,’ one can only faintly hope that there may have been some 
truth in it. Tucker’s American English (1921) defends the same 
thesis. On the other hand, Mrs. Trollope, the first edition of whose 
Domestic Manners of the Americans appeared in 1882, is illustrative 
of those who went much too far in the other direction. She declared, 
Domestic Manners (New York, 1901), I, 65, that very seldom during 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 49 


her whole stay in America had she heard ‘‘a sentence elegantly 
turned and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American. 
There is always something either in the expression or the accent that 
jars the feelings and shocks the taste.’”’? On another occasion, Vol. 
II, p. 31, she remarks, with presumably the same degree of penetra- 
tion, a peculiarity ‘‘in the male physiognomy of Americans’’—that 
their lips are almost uniformly thin and compressed, an acquired 
trait which she thinks came from the necessity of keeping the quid 
of tobacco in the mouth. And again, Vol. II, p. 170, she informs her 
readers that Americans are convinced that “one of their exclusive 
privileges is that of speaking English elegantly.’’ She gives two rea- 
sons to explain this conviction: ‘“‘the one is, that the great majority 
have never heard any English but their own, except from the very 
lowest of the Irish; and the other, that those who have chanced to 
find themselves in the society of the few educated English who have 
visited America, have discovered that there is a marked difference 
between their phrases and accents and those to which they have 
been accustomed, wherefore they have, of course, decided that no 
Englishman can speak English.’ 

It is obvious that any one attempting to estimate the relative 
values of British and American English must go at the matter in a 
different spirit from that exhibited by the writers from whom quo- 
tation has been made. It is obvious also that any such estimate 
will have to do with questions of profit and loss in details and will 
not lead either to general condemnation or to general approval of 
either type of English speech. 


Another popular and erroneous notion not infrequently expressed 
with reference to English in America is that American English being 
by origin provincial is unusually archaic. Stated more compactly, 
this notion often takes the form that American English is the English 
of Shakspere. The supposed explanation of this supposed fact is 
best given in the language of quotation: 

“The colloquial speech of the educated class in America is to 
some extent archaic, compared with that of the similar class in Eng- 


50 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


land. This is due to the operation of certain causes, which are well 
known to students of language. A tongue carried from one land to 
another, and keeping up no communication with the tongue of the 
mother country, undergoes what is technically called an arrest of 
development. The words and phrases and meanings in use at the 
time of separation remain fixed in the language which has been 
transported. On the other hand, changes are constantly taking 
place in the language which has been left behind. It abandons 
words and phrases once widely employed; it introduces words and 
phrases hitherto unknown. In this development the transported 
speech does not share. It clings to the vocabulary with which it 
started; and as regards the terms constituting it, and the meanings 
given them, it is apt to remain stationary.’’! 

The main statement of this paragraph, that transplanted lan- 
guages undergo an arrest of development, that is, tend to remain as 
they were at the time of transplanting, if true at all, could be true 
only metaphorically. For languages are not like trees or plants, 
objects of the external world. A language does not exist apart from 
the mental activities of individuals. One cannot transplant lan- 
guages, therefore, but only individuals who use languages. ‘The ques- 
tion then widens, and one must ask, do transplanted groups of indi- 
viduals undergo an arrest of intellectual development? In the main, 
obviously they do not. The history of language, as of other social 
institutions, shows conclusively that periods of migration, during 
which traditions are naturally unsettled and new combinations of 
individuals with new influences upon each other are constantly being 
formed, are just the periods in which extensive changes are likely 
to take place. It is true, of course, that a transplanted group may 
in its new home become completely separated from its old home, or 
may become isolated from all contact with what to it is the outside 
world, and thus like any other isolated community, may tend to 
transmit without modification its speech and other social traditions 


1J. F. Lonnsbury, in The International Magazine, May, 1880, quoted by C. F. 
Smith, The Southern Bivouac, I, 344. The source of most expressions of this opinion 
is Ellis, Harly English Pronunciation, Part I, p. 19 (1869); see Bryant, On the Con- 
servation of Language in a New Country, p. 277 ff. 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 51 


from generation to generation. Such communities in America are 
found in the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains, and in other out- 
lying regions. The speech of these communities is archaic, however, 
not because it is transplanted speech but because the communities 
in their general social life have had few social contacts. Thus the 
speech of Iceland is archaic as compared with that of Norway. But 
the same cannot be said of America as a whole, or of the English 
language in America. In very many respects the language has 
changed, in pronunciation and in vocabulary, since the arrival of the 
early settlers. Perhaps it has not changed more than British English, 
for both have been the expression of a vigorous and developing 
civilization. Neither can be said to have undergone an arrest of 
development. If certain archaisms appear only in American speech, 
this merely means that these features of speech, through the acci- 
dents of circumstances, have chanced to survive in America and not 
in England. On the other hand, the speech of England also has its 
peculiar archaic survivals, preserved through the force of their own 
circumstances, which do not appear in America. And if one might 
hazard a guess on a point not established by statistical evidence, 
one would say that there are vastly more archaic survivals, for 
example in heraldry, in official and institutional life, in England than 
there are in America. American survivals, being peculiar to America, 
are merely by this fact brought into exceptional prominence by the 
critic who is looking for things: peculiar to America. 

But though neither the spirit nor the form of American English 
may be said to be a continuation of English in Elizabethan England, 
there exists nevertheless an extraordinary resemblance in some 
respects between the two. The explanation is to be found in the fact 
that the conditions of life in America during the past hundred years 
have been not unlike those in England in the latter sixteenth and early 
seventeenth centuries. Life in America has been a great adventure. 


A spirit of freedom, of independence, of experimentation has been 
1 Bryant, pp. 286-287, discusses a few British archaic survivals, fruiterer, draper, 
mercer, costermonger, poulterer, beetle (in a generalized sense like American bug), biscuit, 


coverlet, autumn, casket, squash, creek (an inlet in the seacoast), hustings, luggage, copse, 
cony, close (as in a cathedral close), goloshes. 


U. OF I. LIB. 


52 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


in the air ever since the astonishing expansion of the country in 
population, in territory, in practical and intellectual interests began 
early in the nineteenth century. In this exuberant development the 
English language in America has shared. The language has been 
treated playfully, sportingly, violently, in all the strange medley of 
manners which Americans have exhibited in their attitudes towards 
the changing circumstances of life by which they were surrounded. 
American vivacity and picturesqueness of expression have resulted 
in a rich vocabulary of slang to match which in the English language 
one must go back to the days of Shakspere and Ben Jonson. In- 
genuity and inventiveness in speech have not been held in check in 
America by the restraining sense of conventional propriety to the 
extent that they may have been in eighteenth and nineteenth century 
England, where the conventions of speech were established by a 
respected and obeyed upper class. In America speech has taken form 
more directly in response to immediate impulse. Every American 
citizen has felt that the language is as much his property as it is that 
of anybody else. He has considered himself free to treat the lan- 
guage as he felt inclined, even to the extent of taking liberties with it. 
Dithyrambic orators, inspired “‘inkslingers” with nothing to say but 
with iridescent language to say it in, writers of journalistic extrava- 
ganzas, sporting editors, punsters, rimesters, slangsters of every 
description, all these have flourished in the wild jungle of free Ameri- 
can expression. Side by side with this license there has to be sure 
always existed in America a strong sense of authority, a strong feeling 
of respect for classical and traditional standards which has kept the 
language in its more serious uses from deviating too far from the 
ancient and honorable models of English expression. When English 
has been extravagantly used in America, it has been so with full real- 
ization of the difference between free and traditional, between normal 
and eccentric expression. The Elizabethan quality in American 
English is not an inheritance but a development on American soil. 


Not as much light is thrown upon the causes of dialectal diver- 
gences in America by the comparative study of American pronuncia- 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 53 


tions as might be desired. It is abundantly clear that many local 
dialectal differences are traceable directly to local dialectal differences 
in England which were transferred from England to America. Much 
more detailed study of dialects from this comparative point of view 
is necessary, however, before one can make many generalizations 
with assurance. It will probably be found in almost every instance 
that American dialects are very mixed, especially those dialects which 
have enjoyed any wide extent of use. It may be possible to discover 
here and there in American speech islands of limited extent which 
because of their isolation have maintained a homogeneous existence. 
Charleston, South Carolina, and certain groups dwelling in the 
Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky mountains are supposed to be 
communities of this kind. Special historical studies of these 
several communities are much to be desired, and it is only after 
such studies have been made that one could assert that their 
speech is or is not homogeneous, or could hope to discover the 
precise origins of the several types of speech represented by 
them. When one passes from the consideration of such restricted 
local communities to larger groups, it immediately becomes evident 
that all American dialects are so mixed that a parallelism between 
any single British dialect and any single American dialect becomes 
impossible. 

The statements of the earlier students of American speech on this 
question of the local origins of American speech in England are 
contradictory and often the merest guesses. Webster was inclined 
to connect the speech of New England more closely with the speech 
of the south than with that of the north of England. In this he was 
probably right in the main, though he made no collection of details 
to support his conclusion. Bartlett, p. xxxvill, however, seems con- 
vinced that New England English was derived from northern 
British. ‘‘The numerous words employed in New England,” he 
declares, ‘‘which are not heard in other parts of the country are 
mostly genuine old words still provincial in the north of England: 
very few are of indigenous growth.”’ Now and then in the body of 
his dictionary, Bartlett speaks of New England idioms as being 


54 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


derived from “Northern British,’ but he gives no further reasons why 
he thought they were thus derived. 

A similar vagueness of statement appears in De Vere’s Ameri- 
canisms. ‘‘All the provincialisms,’’ he declares, p. 427, ‘‘of the 
Northern and Western counties of England have been naturalized 
in the New England States, thanks to the Pilgrim Fathers, who 
had left the banks of the Trent and Humber, and subsequently 
by the new colonists, who followed from Norfolk and Suffolk.” 
“They brought not only their words,” continues De Vere, ‘‘ which 
the Yankee still uses, but also a sound of the voice and a mode of 
utterance which have been faithfully preserved, and are now spoken 
of as the ‘New England drawl,’ and the high metallic ring of the 
New England voice (Charles Wentworth Dilke). The former is 
nothing but the well-known Norfolk ‘whine,’ the proverbial annoy- 
ance of visitors from the ‘shires.’ ’’ Elsewhere, p. 627, speaking of 
the southern loss of r in America, De Vere declares that this sin ought 
to be laid ‘“‘upon the shoulders of the guilty forefathers, the first 
English settlers, many of whom came from Suffolk, and the districts 
belonging to the East Anglians, and, no doubt, brought over with 
them this disregard of the letter 7.” 

Senator Hoar, ‘‘The Obligations of New England to the County 
of Kent,” in the Proceedings of the American Archaeological Society, 
New Series, III, 344-371 (1885), discusses mainly the political and 
legislational debt of New England to Kent, a debt which he finds 
to be definitely provable in several instances. With respect to 
language, he merely takes Holloway’s Provincial Dictionary (1838), 
and notes a number of instances in which Kentish speech agrees with 
New England speech; but the inference of New England indebted- 
ness to Kent is somewhat invalidated by the looseness of the method 
employed to establish it. The same criticism must be made of Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson’s study, ‘English Sources of American 
Dialect,’’ in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New 
Series, IV, 159-166 (1886). Higginson examined Grose’s Provincial 
Glossary (1st ed., 1787, 2nd ed. 1790) and Pegge’s supplement to 
Grose in his Anecdotes of the English Language (1814), noting the 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 55 


characteristic words of New England as they were localized in these 
lists. ‘‘On the whole,” he concluded, ‘‘the vast balance of numbers 
seems to me an indication, so far as it goes, that the strain of our New 
England ancestry came more largely from the North of England than 
from Kent.” 

The chief conclusion to be drawn from such studies as these is 
the need of a stricter scientific method of investigating the question 
than has hitherto been employed. The English Dialect Dictionary 
has now made available a great body of material concerning contem- 
porary British dialects, and it may be that an exact comparative study 
of American vocabulary in relation to British vocabulary as here 
recorded would yield results of value. A comparative study of con- 
temporary dialects, however, would not provide a safe basis for con- 
clusions concerning the relations of British and American dialects 
three hundred years ago. It would seem that the best beginning in 
such a comparative historical study could be made by approaching 
the question from the side of ethnology, of the local origins of the 
families which settled in various parts of America. ‘‘No list has yet 
been made,”’ says Senator Hoar, p. 368, ‘‘ which shows, by shires, the 
origin of the emigrants who came to New England in the first thirty 
years of the settlement, even so far as the knowledge we have might 
enable it to be done.’”’ Until such lists are made, covering all the 
available sources of information, it would be futile to attempt to 
determine racial origins by the study of dialectal differences. Dia- 
lect may confirm conclusions drawn from documentary genealogical 
studies, but it cannot take the place of them. English and American 
dialects have always been so mixed that they can be used as circum- 
stantial evidence, often in a strikingly confirmatory way, but with 
little or no independent value. 

An excellent beginning in this method of genealogical investiga- 
tion is made in the admirable study by Orbeck, Karly New England 
Pronunciation, Chapter V, ‘‘The Sources of New England Speech.”’ 
In a total of 1652 pioneers in the towns of Plymouth, Watertown 
and Dedham, pioneers being settlers who came from England in the 
first wave of migration, Orbeck has been able to trace 685, or 41.47 


56 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


per cent to their English homes. There is no reason to think that the 
persons thus traced are in any way peculiar, or that inferences based 
upon them would not apply to greater numbers, if information con- 
cerning the origins of greater numbers were available. The place of 
origin of these pioneers is given in the following table: 


TABLE A 
NVOPKSRITS Pah eh hl) Gly ot eee ae RC LEE eave 5 
Nottinghamshire . . . . . 7 Berkshire PO oe a er 
Lincolnshire : 8°) “Hampshire a)! (Sy ae 
Leicestershire Jo TM aaa a Es ee 8 
Rutland ae Ok Ve a Ue ees aa ee 7 
Northamptonshire . 4 Devonshire . 2 
Cambridgeshire 2 eS Somersetah ie ie 12 
Norfolkw oye a Ne 08 Oe orcesterannicens 5 
Suffolk ee is hep) Bea) der 8 OG A OY eager ies as 3 
PUsser sea A vd es Ee x 
Hertiordshire iy) 2h Yo Las aT cere ee 4 
Bedfordshire i002 Ge Oe eae isle oie 1 
Buckinghamshire . . . . . 38 Scotland 1 
IEF esex ae) die kes aoe ee at Reps ene Wek Les 1 
DORA GN ry VRe Le eC Necks OE tees eS Pe 3 
Sen Gay Ou eno Th) I COL ies Wa iE Oh Lee 9 


The first observation one would make in reviewing this table is 
that the origin of the early New England settlers is extraordinarily 
diverse, but the second is just the opposite, that the larger part of 
the settlers came from a small number of closely related localities. 
“The center of the exodus,” says Orbeck, “‘was certainly Suffolk, 
and omitting London, the two adjoining counties, Norfolk to the 
north, and Essex to the south, come next. Indeed 67.73 per cent 
came from the coast counties from (and including) London to the 
Wash (ie., Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and London). ‘There 
were twice as many,” continues Orbeck, ‘“‘from the counties south of 
the Suffolk line as from the territory north of the line. It is interest- 
ing to note also that 599 came from the coast counties as against 72 
from the inland counties. There were very few from the middle 
western counties, only four from Lancashire, and none whatever 
from the four northernmost counties. From the Scrooby region— 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 57 


southern Yorkshire, northern Nottingham and Lincolnshire—there 
were not a great many besides those who came to Plymouth by way 
of Holland.” The obvious inference to be made from this tabula- 
tion, as Orbeck points out, is that “‘we are to look for the roots of 
HKastern Massachusetts speech in the eastern dialects of England.” 


The distribution of place names may also provide some evidence 
concerning the local origins in England of groups of early colonists 
in America. The value of this evidence may be estimated from 
the summary of Dexter’s essay on ‘“‘The History of Connecticut as 
Illustrated by the Names of Her Towns,” in the Proceedings of the 
American Antiquarian Society, New Series, III, 437. To the question 
whether the study of place names helps one to know from what 
parts of England Connecticut was peopled, his answer is that this 
evidence corroborates other sources of information concerning Con- 
necticut stock. ‘‘What this stock was, the experiences of the New 
Haven Colony well illustrates; the first settlers in the town of New 
Haven represented at least three distinct neighborhoods—one part 
from London, one from Kent, and one from Yorkshire—the last 
colonizing in the quarter which our modern ‘York Street’ marks. 
Guilford was mainly settled from Surrey and Kent, and Milford 
from Herefordshire in the west. Here we have then a mingling of 
streams, from the metropolis, the southeastern counties, the distant 
northeast, and the western midland; and this partial view is typical 
of the whole. In populating Connecticut, not only London and the 
eastern counties, but in less degree the southwest, the midland, the 
northeast, all bore their part, and all contributed their fair share to 
our treasury of town names.’ A more discriminating and extensive 
study of town names might be useful, however, in indicating the 
relative proportions of American colonists from the several regions of 
England. 


American English shares with British English a noticeable ten- 
dency to make the spoken or auditory forms of words conform to 
the written or visual forms. This is characteristic of all highly 


58 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


developed literary languages, and the tendency in general grows as 
the printed and written aspects of language become more prominent 
in the language consciousness of a people. ‘Thus we find that many 
words which now have but a single standard form in both American 
and British English became established in this form under the influ- 
ence of spelling and within the modern English period. Examples 
of this are wreck, formerly pronounced [rek] or [reek], but since the 
end of the eighteenth century, only [rek].1_ So also mesh formerly 
varied between [me] and [mez{], but now has settled on only the 
former. In get, yet, yes, the eighteenth-century pronunciations 
[git], [jxt], j1s] have completely given place to one with [e] in accord 
with the spelling. In sward, recorded by earlier phoneticians as 
|sord] and [sword], the spelling with w has made the latter pronun- 
ciation universal, though the w in sword has not made its way into 
pronunciation. Many similar examples of adaptation of the spoken 
form to the written form of words will be found in the chapter on 
the American pronunciation of English. But though this tendency 
is & necessary tendency in all modern languages which take their 
speech into the mind to a considerable extent through the eye as 
well as the ear, it seems in American English to have found a field 
specially favorable for its development. Since the standard in 
America has not been the spoken language of any particular locality 
or class of society, but one based on a theoretical national custom, 
necessarily it made its appeal largely through literature, wherein 
national custom is most comprehensively expressed. In other words, 
American English replaced social tests by literary educational tests 
in speech, the latter being almost altogether tests applied through 
the printed page. In this way American English has become in many 
instances more rational, that is, more subject to analogical rules, 
than British English. In the latter, pronunciations often persist 
through the sanction of social custom which grotesquely contradict 
the ordinary and expected conventions of spelling. Thus in England 
for chemist one may still hear [’k1mrst], for clerk one may hear [kla:k], 


1 For further historical details concerning the pronunciation of these sounds, see 
the discussions in the second volume. 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 59 


for falcon one is more likely to hear a pronunciation with the J silent 
in England, but pronounced in America; in asthma, isthmus, the 
more general pronunciation in England gives th the value of ¢, but 
in America almost universally the letters th have their ordinary 
value as a voiced or voiceless continuant. 

The contrast between the British and the American attitude 
towards this question of harmony between pronunciation and spelling 
is still more marked in proper names. In America the rule is that 
pronunciations have been modified to accord with the common analo- 
gies of spelling, or spellings have been modified to accord with pro- 
nunciations. Thus Berkeley, Berkshire, Hertford, and many similar 
family and place names, are pronounced in America with the value 
which e before r and a consonant ordinarily has, but in England these 
words have [a:]. If the pronunciation with [a1] is retained in Amer- 
ica, then the spelling would normally be made to conform, as Bar- 
clay, Hartford. In England the word Greenwich is commonly pro- 
nounced [’grin1d3], but the almost universal pronunciation in the 
town in Connecticut of that name is [/gri:n‘wit§]. The name of the 
town Worcester in Massachusetts is of course pronounced [/wuista] 
as in England, but Wooster in Ohio, though it retains the old pro- 
nunciation, changes the spelling to agree with the pronunciation. 
Thus also original Beaufort, a not uncommon Southern name in 
America, is sometimes written as pronounced, Buford, and older 
Beauchamp is written Beecham. ‘The proper name Ralph, when so 
spelled, is pronounced [relf] in America, but often [re:f], [rerf] in 
England. For Jenny only [’d3ent] would be heard in cultivated 
speech in America, but in England, [’d3m1] perhaps more frequently 
than [’d3ent]. 

In many other proper names respect for the spelling seems often 
to encourage a fuller pronunciation of the relatively unstressed parts 
of the words in America than in England. The word Hobart, said 
to be pronounced [/habot] in England, Michaelis-Jones, Phonetic 
Dictionary, p. 180, would be pronounced [‘ho:‘bart], [/ho:‘ba:t] in 
America, or in rapid speech [‘ho:bet]. Words like Ayscough, Avebury, 
Eddystone, would seem to American ears more naturally pronounced 


60 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


as [’ers‘kof], [/erv‘bert], [‘edt‘stom] than in the British fashion as 
[’etskof], [’etbort], [’edrsten]. 

Examples similar to these might be added in large numbers, 
enough certainly to justify the conclusion that though both British 
and American English strive in many instances to bring the visual 
and the spoken forms of the words of the language into harmony, the 
effort seems to have worked more fully and effectively in America 
than in England. If Americans appear more reasonable and less 
conventional than the British in this respect, the explanation is to 
be found not in the peculiarly practical nature of the American 
people, but in the special conditions of English speech in America, 
especially in the influence of elementary popular education upon 
speech, and in the exaltation of literary and theoretical standards 
of speech above the social traditions of spoken language. 


Mixture of races in America has had much less direct effect upon 
the feeling for the American mother tongue than might be expected. 
The American nation is a composite of many peoples, but its lan- 
guage has shown no tendency to become polyglot. So far as pronun- 
ciation is concerned, it is doubtful if in a single instance the pro- 
nunciation of normal American English has been modified by the 
influence of a foreign language. There are to be sure many foreign- 
ers in America who speak “‘broken English,” who speak with an 
“‘accent,”’ but the character of this kind of English is always unmis- 
takable. Henry James, in The American Scene (1907), p. 223, 
describes an occasion on a certain afternoon in Boston, when he 
listened to the conversation of ‘“‘a continuous passage of men and 
women,” none of whom spoke English. Some spoke ‘‘a rude form 
of Italian,” others ‘‘some outland dialect”? unknown to the observer. 
‘‘No note of any shade of American speech struck my ear,’ the 
passage continues, ‘‘save in so far as the sounds in question [i.e., 
of the foreign speakers] represent to-day so much of the substance 
of that idiom |[i.e., of American speech].”’ But what elements of the 
“‘substance”’ of American speech to-day come from Italian, or from 
Polish or Russian or Lithuanian, or any other ‘“‘outland dialect’’? 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 61 


Called to a strict account for his remark, Henry James could not 
have pointed, one may be quite sure, to a single specific instance 
in which any sound of a foreign speech has been taken over into 
American English, or has modified in any degree the sounds of 
American speech. No doubt some sounds of American English may 
be found in foreign languages—in any foreign language. But there 
is no sound of American speech which cannot be traced back to 
periods much earlier than those in which foreign contaminations 
have been possible. 

In vocabulary a few words from foreign languages have been taken 
over into American English, more from the Indians, with whom, 
strangely enough, the white people have never had very intimate or 
extensive social communication, but who have always appealed to 
their imagination, than from any other source; but the number of 
distinctly American foreign borrowings is less than the language as 
spoken in Great Britain reveals, where colonial relationships and 
international commerce have been particularly favorable to the 
borrowing of foreign terms. So far as syntax and idiom are concerned, 
it is again doubtful if a single instance of a foreign construction which 
has made its way into general or standard use at any time can be 
pointed out in American English. The explanation of this fact 
is that American English, in spite of the presence in the body 
politic of large numbers of people speaking foreign languages, has 
never been really exposed to contamination with foreign idioms. 
Immigration of other than English-speaking peoples began early, 
but from the start the foreign elements have been quickly assimi- 
lated to the native. In the seventeenth century, after the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes, a number of French Huguenots sought a 
refuge in America, but they soon dispersed and disappeared in the 
body of the population. Before the end of the century, large num- 
bers of Germans had settled in Pennsylvania and the Valley of 
Virginia, and there they have maintained a kind of separate existence 
to this day, retaining a modified German dialect still widely in use 
for colloquial purposes and also illustrated to some extent in a litera- 
ture of their own. 


62 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The Pennsylvania German dialect, however, exhibits the develop- 
ment which always takes place when the language of a people of 
relatively lower cultural and social standing comes into contact with 
that of a higher, that is, it has been deeply affected by English but 
has not exerted a corresponding, or even an appreciable, influence 
in the opposite direction. This statement applies not only to the 
German of the early emigrants, but likewise to that of the vast 
numbers who came later. The Germans in America have been more 
tenacious of their continental traditions than any other class of emi- 
grants, and German has occupied a more important position in the 
instruction of the public schools than any other living language of 
continental Europe. But the effect of German upon American Eng- 
lish has been negligible. The statement of Richard Grant White, 
Atlantic Monthly, November, 1879, that “with all our German 
immigration, there is not a single German phrase current among us”’ 
is still true. By the same token the following statement of Bartlett, 
Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), p. xxxvil, was never true: ‘“‘The 
great extent to which the scholars of New England have carried the 
study of the German language and literature for some years back, 
added to a very general neglect of the old masterpieces of English 
composition, have had the effect of giving to the writings of many 
of them an artificial, unidiomatic character, which has an inexpressibly 
unpleasant effect to those who are not habituated to it.’”’ German 
was studied with some enthusiasm by a few persons in New England 
in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and Germany then 
seemed to many New Englanders not only a fresh fount of philosophic 
wisdom but also a land of poetry and romance. It is not apparent, 
however, that any New England writers consciously or unconsciously 
went so far as to fashion their style after German writers. * 

To the generation of Americans of German parentage born 
upon American soil, German has seemed almost as much a foreign 

1 For a discussion of the knowledge of German in New England, see Goddard, 
‘“German Literature in New England in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century,”’ 
in Studies in New England Transcendentalism, pp. 202-206. The Monthly Magazine 


and American Review, II (1800), 284-287, has an essay “On the Study of 
German,”’ giving reasons for the study of that language. 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 63 


language as French or Italian, to be learned with the same assiduity 
and labor. This statement applies even more strongly to other groups 
of Americans of foreign parentage. Northern Teutons from Den- 
mark, Sweden and Norway, southern Europeans from Italy and 
Greece, eastern Europeans from Poland, Russia, Hungary and the 
smaller states, even Asiatics from Armenia and Turkey have come in 
steady streams, and for a time in limited communities have main- 
tained a civilization of their own. In every instance, however, these 
bodies of foreign emigrants have come from relatively low social 
levels. Even in their own countries they had not, as a rule, assimi- 
lated the highest culture which their native surroundings afforded, 
nor had they exerted such a controlling part in it that they could feel 
it as a precious possession to be cherished at any cost. They came to 
America with an initial readiness to accept the institutions of their 
new homes. Undisciplined in the control of public affairs, they were 
not prepared to take a constructive part in the organization even of 
their own life in America, and have thus been, to the present time, 
the led rather than the leaders. The main result of foreign emigration 
to America has consequently been to add to the number of native 
born illiterates a very large number of illiterates of foreign parentage. 
So far as the American standard of national use is concerned, it 
matters little whether illiteracy is native and provincial or colored by 
recollection of foreign idioms. The great problem of instruction 
which by general agreement has confronted and still confronts the 
educational forces of the country is to correct the one as much as the 
other, and to the solution of this problem, the public schools have 
turned their attention with such intelligence and energy as to make 
speakers of standard American out of foreigners as readily as out of 
provincial Americans. In many instances, indeed, their success has 
been greater with children of foreign parentage than with native 
Americans, for the former, aware of a heavy social handicap to 
overcome, put forth special exertions, whereas the latter, inclined 
to think themselves as good as any one else, refuse to have their 
eyes opened to conditions which might destroy their personal satis- 
faction. 


64 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The question of climate inevitably arises when one attempts to 
consider the formative influences which have determined the charac- 
ter of a national language. The weather is always an engrossing sub- 
ject of interest, and every community is likely to be so impressed by 
the peculiarities of its own particular style of weather as to ascribe 
to it powers and effects which extend wide and deep. Such ascrip- 
tions, however, are very rarely susceptible of positive proof, nor do 
they, on examination, often seem plausible. In the case of American 
English, for example, if one were to seek for an effect of climate on 
speech, with what climate would one begin? From Maine to Florida, 
from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from Oregon to New 
Mexico, the greatest diversities of climate are to be found. One 
may pass from the tropical climate of the south to the sub-Arctic 
climate of the far north, from mountain to prairie, from sage-brush 
desert to forest, and in no one of these regions would one find what 
might be called the typical ‘“‘American climate.”’ The distinctive 
feature of American climate, as of the social life of the country, is 
diversity, rather than uniformity. Diversity of social life may well 
be a significant element in determining the character of American 
speech, but it is difficult to see how diversity of climate can produce 
any effects except such as are purely local. But even in localities, it 
is doubtful if climate can be regarded as an effective cause of local 
characteristics of speech. The most plausible case could perhaps be 
made for Southern American English as contrasted with Northern. 
The languorous climate of the South has been thought to account 
for the slow soft voices of the Southerners, their general loss of the 
sound of r final and before consonants, and perhaps for a tendency 
to obscure unstressed syllables to a greater extent than is customary 
in the North. As to slowness of speech, something will be said later 
in the discussion of the American “drawl,” but for the moment it will 
be sufficient to point out that observers have generally found this to 
be a characteristic not only of Southern but all American speech. The 
Yankee drawl has been the subject of comment for generations. 
Furthermore, if a warm climate be regarded as having produced a 
languorous manner of speech in the American South, the principle 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 65 


involved must be one applicable to human society in general. The 
evidence of Italy and Southern France alone, however, is sufficient 
to disprove that a Southern climate produces a slow and lazy speech. 
The loss of the sound of r, again, cannot be regarded as due to South- 
ern climate, for exactly the same phenomenon appears in some 
Northern American communities, notably in New England and 
southern New York, and it is of course one of the well-known char- 
acteristics of standard British English. The same applies to the 
slurring of unstressed syllables. In many instances, and probably 
this statement could be made universal, what might be regarded as 
peculiar to Southern America finds parallels in usages of other regions 
with very different climates, and in every case a better explanation 
could be made for the several features on the basis of the effect of 
social relations than on that of the effect of climate. 

One general description of American English has often been 
given which is at the same time an accusation against it, the blame 
for which has frequently been laid upon the climate. The statement 
usually runs that the American voice is hard, inflexible, lacking in 
resonance and over-tones, that it is monotonous and dry. Toa certain 
extent Americans themselves acknowledge this, though fain to deny 
it when their attention is called to it by the alien critic. The state- 
ment is also often made that the cultivated Southern American voice 
stands in strong contrast to the voice of the cultivated Northern 
or Western speaker, that it has a different and more musical quality. 
It would be a rash person, however, who should say that a hard and 
inflexible voice is universally or even generally characteristic of the 
North or West. It cannot be regarded as one of the natural products 
of these regions. The division in this matter of the speaking voice is 
not to be made on the basis of locality, but more reasonably on the 
differences of temperament and habit. Men of affairs who have 
given themselves up to the bitter competition of business, who have 
fought first to gain a position and then to maintain it in the face of 
remorseless opposition, may not infrequently reveal in the harshness 
of their voices the severity and social inhumanity of the struggles 
through which they have gone. Such men often fill in a democratic 


66 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


community positions of greater importance than their social virtues 
qualify them to occupy. They are often rich men, and consequently 
part of that traveling American public prominently seen and loudly 
heard in conspicuous places. They are indeed a characteristic product 
of American conditions, and if their voices seem not to possess the 
quality and modulations of a gentle speech, the explanation is to be 
found in the fact that their activities have not been in the regions 
where the milder and easier social adaptations have had weight. A 
hard, domineering habit of mind will show itself in the same way in 
the voice of the speaker, whether he be a Northerner or a Southerner, 
an American, an Englishman, or of any other race. The barometer 
by which the fluctuations of speech are measured is an extremely 
sensitive one, but its records are to be interpreted in terms of social 
atmosphere, not often in those of wind and rain and weather. 


Though a summary such as has been attempted in this chapter 
cannot pluck the heart out of the mystery of American English, it 
provides pegs nevertheless to which we may attach impressions. The 
feeling for a mother tongue must always rest upon distinctive national 
traditions. Few of the principles brought forward in this chapter 
to account for the existence of an American idiom would be equally 
applicable to the speech of England, France, Italy, Russia, or Ger- 
many. Nations make their own histories, and American speech, for 
better or for worse, is the child of the American people. But in this 
matter of the formation of a standard or generalized national speech, 
among western nations perhaps the closest similarity is to be found 
between the United States and Germany. A standard national speech 
may be based, first, upon the particular dialect of a locality, general- 
ized and extended to the whole people; or second, upon the speech 
of a special social class, accepted and imitated by all other classes as 
providing the approved model of speech; or third, upon neither a 
local nor a class dialect, but upon the formally recorded, that is, the 
relatively fixed and visual aspects of the language. Manifestly 
American standard English is not primarily an extended local dialect. 
Neither is it the speech of any social class, a gentry, a nobility, or 


THE MOTHER TONGUE 67 


even a peasantry. The main supporting foundation for the feeling 
for a standard speech in America is to be found in the written lan- 
guage, not of course in the ingenious literary devices of the profes- 
sional literary style, but in what may be designated as the normal 
daily uses of the written language. Each new group of American 
citizens has entered into possession of the language not as a natural 
inheritance, not as a privilege, but as an acquisition, as something 
to be gained through intelligent application and study. In America, 
as in Germany, the chief task of language in the last four or five gen- 
erations has been to provide some kind of amalgamating medium to 
hold together a great variety of elements geographically, socially and 
culturally disparate, assembled suddenly and without preparation. 
The problem of language in America has therefore been a problem 
of organization. Out of heterogeneity, unity had to be produced, 
not by century long processes of slow development, but quickly and 
efficiently. To attain this end, the surest and speediest way was to 
base the feeling for the national idiom upon what are in some respects 
the more mechanical sides of speech, that is, upon reading and writing 
as the most readily comprehensible among the necessary accomplish- 
ments of all good citizens. It is on the foundation of education in 
these elemental, but profoundly significant aspects of the use of 
speech, that the main structure of American linguistic unity has 
been reared. 


VOCABULARY 


The vocabulary of the English language in America has always 
been in the main the same as the vocabulary of the English language 
in England. In other words, both American English and British 
English are constituent elements in a unity which must be designated 
the English language. This is the unity of the English-speaking 
communities. But such a bald statement immediately raises the 
questions in what this unity consists, what it is that gives the English 
language of the English-speaking peoples its distinctive and essential 
character, and what it is that enables one to relate the several aspects 
of the language, for example, British and American English, to the 
central and unifying idea of its nature. In effect this is merely the 
question of dialects, of their definition and relationships. 

Two ways of establishing a central character or idea of the English 
language are possible. One may say that an actually existent form 
of the language has been by common experience, and therefore by 
right, established as the preeminent authority for the language. If 
any such claim were to be made for the English language, obviously 
it would be the language of England, or some particular form of the 
language of England, which would be elevated to this supreme posi- 
tion. Without entering into debate of the reasons which might be 
adduced as justly supporting or denying any such possible claim, 
one may more profitably consider the question of fact here involved. 
The question of fact is whether all those or any great majority of 
those who must be said to use the English language do thus in practice 
look upon the English of England as having provided the final court 
of authority, the home to which all errant forms of English speech 
must return finally for paternal blessing and approval. The answer 
to this question is obviously that a feeling for a fixed center of the 


English language in the real speech of any English community does 
68 


VOCABULARY 69 


not exist strongly enough to be a determinant in the many and varied 
uses of the speech. The mother tongue of all those who use English 
is not the English of any particular region or of any defined section 
of society. It is something vastly more comprehensive and subtle 
than this. The many different varieties of English speech are evi- 
dences of the practice of those who are equals in the enjoyment of 
their linguistic inheritance. One form of English speech does not 
exist by sufferance of another form, but each form, by the fact 
of its existence, is an element helping to determine the nature of 
the whole. 

The central nature of the English language not being determined 
by the real practice of any locality or group, it remains that it must 
be determined by anidea. It isin fact a concept, a state of mind, and 
not an objective reality. When one thinks of the English language 
as a unity in this way, one is prepared to take a reasonable view of 
those details of language commonly designated Americanisms and 
Briticisms. Is the notion of the English language in America so dif- 
ferent from the central idea of the English language that one must 
give a special name to it and call it the American language? Or in 
other words, must one establish a new central idea and feeling for the 
language which shall give to that speech a unity and character of its 
own? Where do the bounds of sympathetic inclusion within the 
nature of the English language end? 

Now students of psychology have always maintained that no 
two individuals can ever be exactly alike, and one may extend this 
statement to speech and say that the language of no two individuals 
can ever be exactly alike. Whatever generalization one makes, there- 
fore, on the basis of the speech of a group of individuals, even if the 
group contains only two, must allow for a greater or less area of negli- 
gible variation in the speech of these several individuals. A general- 
ization of the speech habits which the group has in common, that is 
the determination of the unity of the group, can be made only by 
eliminating from the generalization those habits which the group 
does not have incommon. This necessity confronts the systematizer, 
no matter how small or how large the group. 


70 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The extent of the area of negligible variation which one permits 
in language depends very much upon feeling. A single word or 
intonation in a particular set of circumstances may cause one to 
expel violently the user of the word or intonation from the circle of 
one’s sympathy. Under other circumstances, however, one may 
find this word or intonation both acceptable and grateful. One for- 
gives much where one’s sympathy is engaged, but where it is not, a 
little spark of occasion may kindle a mighty conflagration of scornful 
denial. 

It is for this reason that one meets with extraordinarily diverse 
statements of the difference between American and British English. 
One observer finds them, to repeat the words of the opening of this 
chapter, essentially the same. Another finds them altogether differ- 
ent, the user of the one language unintelligible to the user of the other. 
Thus on the one side, we find Richard Grant White, Words and 
Their Uses (1870), p. 56, declaring himself as follows: 

“Tf in an assemblage of a hundred educated well-bred people, 
one half of them from London, Oxford, and Liverpool, and the other 
from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia . . . a ready and accurate 
phonographer were to take down every word spoken during an even- 
ing’s entertainment, I feel quite sure that it would be impossible to dis- 
tinguish in his printed report the speech of the Britons from that of 
the Americans, except by the possible occurrence of acknowledged 
local slang, or by the greater prevalence among the former or the 
latter of peculiar words, or words used in peculiar senses, which would 
be acknowledged to be incorrect as well by the authorities of the 
party using them as by those of the other party. In brief, their 
spoken language, reproduced instantly in writing, could be distin- 
guished only by some confessed license or defect, peculiar to one 
country, or more prevalent there than in the other. . . . The stand- 
ard in both countries is the same. . . . But although the written 
speech of these people would be to this degree indistinguishable, an 
ear at all nice in its hearing would be able to separate the sheep from 
the goats by their bleat. . . . Among those of both countries who had 
been from their birth accustomed to the society of cultivated people, 


VOCABULARY 71 


even this distinction would be made with difficulty, and would, in 
many cases, be impossible.” 

On the other side, we hear Fitzedward Hall, an American, declar- 
ing that ‘though I have lived away from America upwards of forty- 
six years, I feel, to this hour, in writing English [that is British as 
contrasted with American], that I am writing a foreign language, 
and that, if not incessantly on my guard, I am in peril of stumbling. 
. . . Not for five minutes can he [the American] listen to the conver- 
sation of his fellow countrymen, or for that length of time read one of 
their newspapers, or one of such books as they usually write, without 
exposure to the influence of some expression which is not standard 
English””—that is, which does not belong to the central idea of the 
English language, or feeling for the language, as these figured in Fitz- 
edward Hall’s experience.: It is difficult to disburden the author of 
so extreme a statement of the charge of wilful determination to 
discover differences at all hazards. And in fact when Hall had the 
temerity to collect many illustrations of ‘‘solecisms, crudenesses, and 
piebald jargon” in the writings of respectable American authors like 
Mrs. Stowe, Howells and others, it was not difficult for his critic to 
point out, in most cases, precisely the details of practice which Hall 
brought forward to prove the un-English character of American usage 
in the writings of standard British authors, and to maintain con- 
vincingly that only patient search would be required to find abundant 
parallels to the remainder of Hall’s examples. In the same spirit as 
Hall another critic declared that he was almost completely bilingual. 
‘“‘T can write English,” he says, ‘‘as in this clause, quite as readily as 
American, as in this here one,’ Mencken, The American Language 
(1919), p. vii. But such criticism is made ineffective by its manifest 
perversity. ‘The truth must lie somewhere in the middle. 


When one says, however, that American and British English to 
the impartial observation are essentially the same, that they are 


1 Fitzedward Hall, ‘‘The American Dialect,’”’ in The Academy, London, March 
25, 1893, pp. 265-7, discussed and reprinted in R. O. Williams, Some Questions of Good 
English, pp. 107 ff. 


72 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


elements in the unity of the English language, this is not equivalent 
to saying that they are identical. Just as an exaggerated view of 
the difference between the two may lead to the discovery of differ- 
ences where in normal experience no sense of difference exists, so an 
exaggerated view of the similarity of the two may lead to a lax re- 
gard for such distinctions as common experience really recognizes. 
These latter distinctions are of course the ones which should be 
made the basis of discussion when one sets out to consider the 
significant relations of American English to the speech of any other 
specialized groups in the general unity of the English language.’ 


It is significant that the word Americanism did not come into exist- 
ence until after the Revolution. It was coined, according to his own 
assertion, by President Witherspoon of Princeton. Writing in 1784, 
Works, IV, 460, he says that ‘‘the word Americanism, which I have 
coined for the purpose, is exactly similar in its formation and signifi- 
cation to the word Scotticism.’”’ The term was devised to designate 
the discussion of “‘an use of phrases or terms, or a construction of 
sentences, even among persons of rank and education, different from 
the use of the same terms or phrases, or the construction of similar 
sentences, in Great Britain.’’ Witherspoon did not assume an 
altogether condemnatory attitude towards his Americanisms. “It 
does not follow, from a man’s using these,” he declares, ‘‘that he is 
ignorant, or his discourse upon the whole inelegant; nay, it does not 
follow in every case, that the terms or phrases used are worse in them- 
selves, but merely that they are of American and not of English 
growth.” In detail, however, Witherspoon’s own observations are 
not numerous or important. The instances of Americanisms which 
he cites are few in number and not of great significance. As Wither- 
spoon was a Scotchman by birth, he probably came to America with 
an ear already cocked for the detection of provincialisms of speech, 
and it is therefore remarkable that he did not discover more than the 
few examples which he mentions. 


1 For a collection of opinions on the relative degree of differentiation or identity 
in British and American English, see Mencken (1921), pp. 1-38. 


VOCABULARY 73 


In general the attitude of Americans in the period immediately 
following the Revolution was one of cordial welcome to all that might 
be regarded as distinctive for American speech. The new nation was 
felt to be in need of anew idiom. Noah Webster’s persistent advocacy 
of an American language has already been noted. Even more em- 
phatically did Thomas Jefferson express his faith in neologism. 
Always hostile to ‘‘the Gothic idea that we are to look backwards 
instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind,” 
Jefferson gladly welcomed what seemed new in language. ‘‘I have 
been not a little disappointed,” he says, Writings, ed. Washington, 
VI, 184, ‘‘and made suspicious of my own judgment, on seeing the 
Edinburgh Reviewers, the ablest critics of the age, set their forces 
against the introduction of new words into the English language; 
they are particularly apprehensive that the writers of the United 
States will adulterate it. Certainly so great growing a population, 
spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety of climates, 
of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language, to make it 
answer the purpose of expressing all ideas, the new as well as the old. 
The new circumstances under which we are placed, call for new 
words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects. 
. . . But whether will these adulterate, or enrich the English lan- 
guage? Has the beautiful poetry of Burns, or his Scottish dialect, 
disfigured it?”’ The enlargement of the English language, Jefferson 
contends, ‘must be the consequence, to a certain degree, of its trans- 
plantation from the latitude of London into every climate on the 
globe; and the greater the degree the more precious will it become 
as the organ of the development of the human mind.” This enlarge- 
ment will come ‘‘not indeed by holding fast to Johnson’s Dictionary; 
not by raising a hue and cry against every word he has not licensed, 
but by encouraging and welcoming new compositions of its elements.”’ 
But in England Jefferson fears that “the dread of any innovation 

. and especially of any example set by France has palsied the 
spirit of improvement.” ‘‘Here [in America] where all is new, no 
innovation is feared which offers good. . . . And should the language 
of England continue stationary, we shall probably enlarge our em- 


74 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


ployment of it, until its new character may separate it in name, as 
well as in power, from the mother tongue.” 

These quotations from Jefferson indicate fairly well the attitude 
of the more liberally minded Americans towards the question of 
vocabulary in speech. There were some conservatives, for example, 
Dwight, who declared himself, Works, IV, 278, unwilling ‘‘to see the 
language of this country vary from that of Great Britain”; and 
there were of course hostile critics in England, like those of the 
Edinburgh Review, who treated American English with scorn and 
reviling. But when one examines the charges of the earlier British 
critics, and the confessions or apologies of the American critics, one 
finds them both strangely deficient in definite detail. There is usually 
no question of the feeling involved, but the grounds of this feeling 
are not made evident. A few stock examples of Americanisms 
occur again and again, such as belittle, clever, lengthy,’ locate, improve 
(in the sense merely to make use of, employ), guess, fix, progress, as a 
verb. Some of these may be regarded as characteristic of the vocab- 
ulary of English in America, but the examples usually brought forth 
illustrate the state of mind of the critic much better than the state 
of the English language in America. Thus a British critic in the 
Monthly Mirror, for March, 1808, remarks that American authors 
make use of new and obsolete words, ‘‘which no good writer in this 
country would employ.” ‘‘And were it not,” he continues, italicizing 
the reprehended words, ‘‘for my destitution of leisure, which obliges 
me to hasten the occlusion of these pages, as I progress I should 
bottom my assertion on instances from authors of the first grade; 
but were I to render my sketch lengthy, I should zlly answer the 
purpose, which I have in view,” see Cairns, British Criticisms, p. 37. 
Doubtless an American who had formed his style by the study of 
Holofernes might have written thus, but doubtless there was never 
such an American. For a summary of British criticisms of American 
speech, see Mesick, The English Traveller in America (1785-1835), 
Chap. VIII. 


1 Discussed in detail in ‘‘The Trial and Condemnation of Lengthy,’ Monthly 
Magazine and American Review, III (1800), 172-174. 


VOCABULARY 75 


A reasonable conception of the term Americanism must obviously 
be arrived at before it is possible to examine the distinctive elements 
in the vocabulary of the English language in America. In any such 
conception a very large group of differences will immediately occur 
to the observer which must be characterized as in themselves having 
very little distinguishing value, whether for British or for American 
English. These are differences between American and British prac- 
tice which rest merely upon what may be called the accidents of 
convention and which are therefore significant only when one of 
these forms of the English language is compared with the other. 
These conventional differences are of the kind which ordinarily in 
polite society fall by consent within the area of negligible variation. 
It is true that such differences have often been the centers about 
which the most violent storms of social prejudice have raged. To 
take an extreme example, not of vocabulary, but of spelling, the 
difference between American honor and British honour is one that 
rests entirely upon a difference of convention. All spellings are 
established only by convention, and the form of a word which is 
agreed upon must needs be the form of the word. On logical and 
historical grounds perhaps as good a case could be made for one of 
these forms as for the other, and if some elements of feeling not 
dependent primarily upon linguistic considerations were not im- 
ported into the discussion of the spellings, one’s attitude towards 
them would be colorless and unprejudiced. 

Many words and locutions of this sort immediately strike the 
attention when one compares American with British usage, especially 
when one compares the concrete English of every-day intimate life 
in America with the English of the same life in England. Thus in 
America the common usage is coal, when one speaks of the fuel to 
be put on a grate, but in England it 1s coals which are put zn a grate. 
The difference is merely that in America coal is used as a mass- 
word, like iron, stone, wood, etc., whereas in the British coals, em- 
phasis is laid upon the fragmentary character of coal utilized as fuel. 
Perhaps, however, American usage has gained slightly in distinct- 
iveness, since coal means the fuel before it is burned, leaving coals 


76 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


to designate the separate pieces of coal when incandescent. But in 
words of this type it nearly always takes an ingenious analysis to 
make out anything characteristic for either British or American 
English. It merely happens that convention, through the accident 
of circumstances, has generalized upon one form in England and 
upon another form in America. A similar development continually 
takes place in all aspects of language that are divisible into terms of 
social grouping. The speaker from a southern region in America is 
likely to have, in a great number of instances, a set of conventional 
habits different from those of a speaker in New England. Perhaps 
the one may say I reckon and the other may say I guess, or the one 
may speak of a veranda when the other speaks of a porch. These 
habits extend to the most subtle and minute details of speech, and a 
really exhaustive analysis would make them extremely numerous. 
Such an analysis would not, however, make them individually any 
more important, and in the end they would merely illustrate more 
fully the fact that in a very great number of words the conventional 
habits which a group establishes are significant only because they 
have been established by convention. In a list of two hundred 
words chosen by Mencken (1921), pp. 118-116, to illustrate the 
difference between British and American English, in most instances 
the words could be transferred from one list to the other without 
violence to what one might feel to be the proper character of either 
type of English. Thus does it make any essential difference whether 
one speaks of a brakeman (American) or a brakesman (British) on 
a train? of a coal-scuttle (said to be American), or a coal-hod (said 
to be British)? or a poorhouse (American) or a workhouse (British)? 
The list of such doublets in which usage is divided but indifferent 
might easily be swelled to numbers far in excess of two hundred. 
In the end their significance might be great, because an accumulation 
of details of this kind might become heavy enough to destroy that 
sense of security and harmony in the use of the idiom which one has 
in relation to all those whom one takes to be fellow citizens in the 
republic of English speech. Whether or not this point has been 
reached in the differentiation of British and American English, 


VOCABULARY 77 


whether or not the area of variation has become so great as no longer 
to be possibly negligible, depends very much upon individual choice 
and view. Certainly differentiation has not proceeded so far as to 
result in unintelligibility. Whether it has gone so far as to destroy 
the sense of sympathy and intimacy between one who uses American 
English and one who uses British English depends largely upon the 
degree of sanctity one attaches to coal-scuttle as contrasted with 
coal-hod, or brakeman as contrasted with brakesman.’ 

In some words the wavering of convention before it became set- 
tled is definitely traceable. The history of such words as gotten 
and got, of guess in the general sense of think, suppose, would carry 
one back to Anglo-Saxon times. For both of these words examples 
could be found in British use, at various times, so close in kind to the 
American use that it would take a hair-splitting analyst to distin- 
guish between them. What alone could make the American usage 
distinctive would be the more frequent, that is more conventionalized 
use of gotten as participle and guess in the sense of suppose, and also 
the fact that the critic has directed attention to gotten and guess, 
among other words, and thus has made them more or less conscious 
uses. In England bug and bloody have also taken on certain con- 
ventionalized meanings which define their use in polite society more 
strictly than the words are defined in American usage. The phrasal 
preposition back of, for which Thornton gives citations beginning 
with 1774, has apparently more general usage in America, in the 
sense of behind, than it has in England. It also has a variant form 
in back of, which completes the analogy to in front of, this latter 
being unquestioned usage both in England and America. 

Other expressions which one interested in the gradual fixing of 
convention and habit in British and American speech may study in 
the examples cited by Thornton, supplementing these by the New 
English Dictionary, are allow, reckon and calculate, in local and familiar 
use as practical synonyms of guess, suppose; the phrase at that, as 


1 With respect to coal-scuttle and coal-hod, it may be noted that the Fowlers’ 
Pocket Ozford Dictionary of Current English (Oxford, 1924), gives coal-scuttle as present 
British use, but does not record coal-hod. 


78 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


in ‘‘our food was of the most unwholesome kind, and scant at that”; 
bureau, meaning a chest of drawers; chores, meaning odd jobs about 
the house; clever, in a variety of senses which shade into each other. 
so gradually that often it is difficult to tell where one type of usage 
begins and another ends; cracker for biscuit; homely, not infrequent 
in British use, but so much less general in England than in America 
that it may ultimately disappear from British standard speech and 
remain only as an Americanism; raise, as in the phrase, “‘I was 
raised, as they say in Virginia. among the mountains of the North,” 
Paulding, Letters, I, 102, though the usage is not limited to Virginia 
and is applied to animals and plants as well as human beings; rooster, 
for cock, with which should be compared roost-cock. Examples of 
roost-cock occur early, though there is no record of a word roost-hen, 
and the American rooster seems to be merely a variant development 
from roost-cock. The word calico may mean in England a white 
cotton cloth, but in America it means only cotton cloth stamped 
with a pattern. 


Though all such variations of use as those just cited are of great 
importance to the dictionary maker, the listing of forms of American 
speech which derive their interest by reason of contrast with British 
speech is nevertheless but a small part of the task of the student 
of the American vocabulary. His more important concern is to 
describe the vocabulary directly in relation to American life, to 
attempt to give in some degree a record of the American mind as 
reflected in words. This is manifestly a large undertaking, and the 
categories presented in the following pages are to be regarded as 
suggestive, rather than exhaustive. They are set forth here as 
indications of some of the directions which special studies of Ameri- 
can vocabulary may take in anticipation of that day when we shall 
have a really satisfactory knowledge of this important subject. 


The history of any language which covers as long a period of 
time as the three hundred years of the English language in America 
must be to some extent a history of words and expressions which 


VOCABULARY 79 


have become obsolete. Some examples will be cited to show that 
there is material for the lexicographer and historian in older American 
texts. In many instances words have fallen completely out of use; 
in others the word survives with a loss of some of its earlier meaning, 
or survives now only in local or rustic use. Often the word has 
passed out of British as well as American use, which means probably 
that it was never well established in any form of English speech. 
Thus one finds the word bolts, as in the phrase “‘boards and bolts,” 
Braintree Records, p. 4 (1646), frequently used in the early town rec- 
ords in the sense of timber sawed into lengths ready to be split into 
clapboards, a meaning no longer current in English. The New 
English Dictionary cites only two occurrences of this word in Eng- 
land, one for 1688, the other for 1753. In Dedham Records, III, 47 
(1638), appears the word stover, ‘‘those which haue not stover 
enough for the cattle they nowe possesse,’’ a word which occurs in 
Shakspere, and which may still be heard rustically in America. A 
word haver, meaning hay, also occurs occasionally in the early rec- 
ords, but is known now only in names, as in Haverstraw, on the 
Hudson, Haverhill, in Massachusetts. The Hasthampton Records, 
I, 112 (1657), speak of ‘‘pease wheat and selfe at the whom [home] 
lott,” but a word self or szlf, in a sense appropriate to this passage, 
is not found in the dictionaries and probably is not now anywhere 
used. These records frequently use while in the sense of until, as in I, 
10 (1650), ‘‘noe man shall set any gun but he shal loke to it while 
the starrs appeare.” This use occurs also in the Braintree Records, 
p. 5 (1652), of a road “to rune through his ground while it come to 
Martine Sanders ground.” Sherwood, A Gozeteer, p. 82, cites this 
as a Georgia provincialism in 1837. 

The word spong, a topographical term, has now completely 
passed out of American use, though it was current in the seventeenth 
century in the forms spong, spang, spung. It meant a strip or sec- 
tion of meadow, as in the Groton Records, p. 136, “‘two parcells or 
spongs,’ “the northernmost spang of Buck medow,” ‘“‘severall 
spongs or angles.” It occurs also in the Southold Records, 1, 56 (1658), 
‘‘a spang of meadowe,” and a late use of the word in the phrase 


80 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


“spang of Creekthach,” II, 484 (1719). In these records, II, 185 
(1682) we also have ‘‘spong or slip of meadow.” 

The word hole, which still survives in various place names in 
New England, was formerly used in much the same sense as spong. 
Thus we read in the Plymouth Records, that ‘‘Mr. Howland desired 
a smale hole or pcell of meddow neare his land graunted him for- 
merly by the toune,”’ I, 46 (1662), and later that ‘hee hath pitched 
upon foure acrees of meddow in a hole mowed by Captaine Brad- 
ford,” I, 59 (1663). The records also describe a grant of ‘‘3 holes of 
meddow” to Francis Cook, I, 208 (1655). They mention place 
names like swan hold, I, 81 (1655), hobshole, I, 110 (1668), Bzllingtons 
holes, I, 155 (1677), giles holes, I, 219 (1673). The Groton Records, 
p. 136, mention skull holl, and also use the word in the sense of a 
section of meadow. The word is no longer in general use and no 
doubt the more common sense of hole, meaning a depression or 
hollow, as in a hole in the ground, a bog hole, etc., has tended to 
crowd out the use of the word merely in the sense of meadow or 
section of meadow. Perhaps transitional forms are to be seen in the 
Southold Records, where we read of a flagge hole, II, 58 (1685), a 
phrase which appears a little more clearly in flaggy hole, I, 455 (1686). 
In these records, I, 453 (1684), Joshua Horton sells ‘‘all the holes of 
water and meadows”’ belonging to him. A further application of 
the word hole is occasionally met with in earlier American usage, 
one which survives in some place names, like Wood’s Hole in Mas- 
sachusetts. In this sense the word means a narrow inlet or cove 
of the sea. In the Rocky Mountains, as in Jackson’s Hole, the word 
hole means an open park-like region. 

The word pan as a geographical term is now in common use 
in the phrase hard pan, a hard sub-stratum of soil which holds water. 
In the sense of a shallow pool, the word is also on record in salt pan, 
oyster pan, and the New English Dictionary records other uses in 
South Africa. In the United States the word has never become 
widely current, though we read in the Southold Records, II, 276 
(1645), of a fresh pann on Long Island. In this connection it may 
be noted that the word hummock is often used in these records to 


VOCABULARY 81 


designate a much larger body of solid ground than would now be 
called by that name. Thus in the Southold Records, II, 246 (1694), 
we read of ‘‘a small humuck of kreekthatch,” being one acre or 
thereabouts. The word appears also as hommock and hammock, I, 
143 (1690). 

Concerning the word meadow itself, the editor of the Groton 
Records, p. 135, remarks that “‘the first settlers of the town did not 
attach the same signification to the word meadow which now belongs 
to it in New England, where it means low, swampy land, without 
regard to the mowing. They called by the name meadow all grass- 
land that was annually mown for hay, and especially that by the 
side of a river or brook, and this meaning of the word was the com- 
mon one in England, whence they brought their language.” Yet 
in the Plymouth Records one often finds reference to meadows or 
‘““meadowish land,’’? apparently with reference to swampiness. We 
still have surviving the term meadow in the sense of swamp in local 
names; as in the Great Meadow in Maine, the Hackensack Meadows 
in New Jersey, the Tuolumne Meadows in California, etc. The truth 
seems to be that the early settlers in New England had no specific 
word for what now would ordinarily be called swampy ground, per- 
haps because ground of this character in the section of England 
from which the colonists came had long been drained and cultivated 
when they migrated to America. They had the word marsh for 
extensive areas of wet land, applied especially to the salt marshes 
of the coast. But the word swamp first meant primarily thicket, 
land covered with undergrowth. It is still used in this sense by 
elderly persons in New England, though more generally the idea of 
wetness has become uppermost in the use of the word. The earlier 
sense is made certain by innumerable passages in seventeenth cen- 
tury records. In the Dedham Records, ILI, 33 (1637), when persons 
received lands for their houses, it was ordered that ‘‘their swamp 
lotts shall adioyne therunto.” Thomas Jordan was granted, p. 61 
(1639), ‘‘One Acre of Swamp to be layd out next his owne ground,”’ 
and Edward Culver was granted, p. 96 (1642), “‘one smale parcell 
of upland and swampe nere his house lott.’ There is frequent 


82 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


reference to the clearing of ‘‘undergrowne stuffe” from the swamps, 
but nothing is said about draining or drying them. Swamps with 
large trees growing in them were distinguished from swamps only 
with undergrowth. The point here was that timber lands were 
held in common and the timber carefully guarded. But swamps 
were lotted out and clearing of them was encouraged in order that 
they might be brought under cultivation. This was done at least 
in the town of Dedham, and when the General Court at Boston ruled 
that large tracts of swamp should lie common, like the forests, the 
citizens of Dedham protested, ‘‘beinge we haue bin at charg to lay 
out the greatest part into proprieties and diuers have bin at charg 
in cleareing the same,’’ Dedham Records, IV, 239 (1646). Jonathan 
Edwards, in his Personal Narrative, Life, by Dwight, p. 59, says 
that he, with some of his schoolmates, “‘joined together and built a 
booth in a swamp, in a very retired spot for a place of prayer.”’ As 
Edwards was a native of Connecticut, near Hartford, his use of 
swamp in this passage to mean a place with thick undergrowth 
would be in keeping with local use. From this earlier sense of swamp 
apparently comes the colloquial phrase to be swamped, that is, to be 
lost in a multitude of tasks or duties. The phrase to swamp out 
timber is a current lumbering usage in Maine, 

The undergrowth of the swamps is spoken of as shruffe in the 
Dedham Records, IV, 98 (1664), which also mentions shruffey upland, 
IV, 8 (1659), and shruffey meadowe, IV, 22 (1660), 98 (1664). An 
unusual use of the word rubbish occurs in Southold Records, I, 410 
(1674), in the phrase rubish land, meaning land cumbered with under- 
growth. 

The Plymouth Records, I, 219 speak of ‘‘a little doak or valley.” 
The word doak, doke, dolk occurs dialectally in England in the sense 
of a dint, a hollow, but has altogether passed out of American use. 

Along the coast with its many indentations and peninsulas, the 
term neck came to be used almost in the sense of meadow. It is now 
known to many persons in the name of the Little Neck clam who have 
no notion that the historical meaning of the word is geographical, 
not anatomical. On Long Island, where the word neck still survives 


VOCABULARY 83 


in many place names (also in Virginia in the Northern Neck), a 
controversy between Huntington and Oyster Bay arose over the 
question whether three necks or four necks of meadow belonged to 
Huntington, Huntington Records, p. 58 (1664). Ina legal conveyance, 
p. 54 (1663), the phrase ‘‘my halfe neck of meddow excepted” 
apparently illustrates also the use of the word in the sense merely of 
section or strip of meadow. From this use of neck in neck of meadow 
may have come another Americanism, neck of woods, meaning region, 
section, settlement in the woods. The earliest example of this which 
Thornton has found is for 1851. 

As the name for an island, key, adapted from Spanish cayo, 
“shoal, reef,” has not been limited to American use, but the word has 
been much more commonly employed here than elsewhere, especially 
in the West Indies and Florida. Key West is the name of a city, but 
also now may be the name of a kind of cigar. An older spelling kay 
sometimes occurred. 

The word everglades as used in Florida to designate the great 
swamps of that region is of unexplained etymological origin. The 
earliest occurrence cited by Thornton and by the New English 
Dictionary is for 1827. The word may be a corruption of some Indian 
word for the locality. 

An interesting geographical word, records of which have been 
found only on Long Island, but of which several examples in England 
are cited by Wright, English Dialect Dictionary, is the word bevel. 
The quotations will illustrate its meaning. In Hempstead Town 
Records, I, 25 (1657) we read of a ‘‘parcell of Land Lying in ye Beavell 
plowed ye Last yeare.”’ A place is named, I, 75 (1660), ‘“‘ye hollowes 
lyeing in the beavell.”” In 1665, Adam Mott, I, 167, sells a ‘‘ peace of 
Plaine Lande of mine Lieing in the Home Bevell.” The phrase 
‘“‘home bavell”’ occurs again, I, 202 (1665). At another place, I, 234 
(1668), we read of ‘‘the parsonage hous bevle.’’ If one might hazard 
a guess at a slightly more precise meaning than the above quotations, 
and many like these, from the Hempstead Records justify, one might 
suppose that a bevel was a piece of level but sloping and well-drained 
ground. At I, 103 (1662), we read of ‘‘ye hollowes lying in ye Bevell,”’ 


84 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


and at I, 90 (1660), of ‘‘ye hollos lieing in ye bevell”’; and see above the 
quotation from I, 75 (1660). Evidently this was a well-known local 
name, and it is equally evident that a bevel was not as low as a hollow. 

The word hollow as a geographical term is commonly used in 
these records, as at I, 107 (1659), ‘‘hollowes and Meadow Land,” 
and apparently it meant ground lower than a meadow but not so 
low as aswamp. Though not now generally current in this sense, in 
the name of Sleepy Hollow the word has become forever established 
in American tradition. In Hempstead Records, I, 74 (1659), we read 
of ‘‘one hollow conteyning one and an halfe Accre.” In the next 
year, p. 75, ‘“‘the wallnut hollow” and ‘‘ye chery-tree hollow,” in 
the plural designated as hoolas, were granted to a citizen of the 
town as a free gift “‘for his assistance, for ye help of him and his 
famely.”’ 

Another name for the tillable sections of New England which has 
not completely disappeared but is more familiar now in place names 
than as a common noun is the word interval, intervale. It occurs in 
the town records as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, 
but the term bottom-land, bottoms, has tended to displace it, and it 
is now archaic and poetic. 

Peters, General History of Connecticut (1781), p. 110, preserves 
an Indian topographical word which is now known only as a proper 
name. Speaking of the Connecticut River, he says that “‘in its 
northern parts are three great bendings, called cohosses, about 100 
miles asunder.’”’ From this word was derived the name of the present 
Coos County, in northern New Hampshire, still pronounced as a 
dissyllable and formerly sometimes written with an h between the 
two vowels, as in Cohors, Green, Three Military Diaries, p. 108. A 
tribe of Indians was known by the name of Coos, the name being, 
as frequently, merely the ascription of a geographical term to the 
Indians who happened to live in that locality. The Indian word is 
said to mean crooked, ‘“‘which appropriately describes the channel 
of the Connecticut in the north,” Sanborn, History of New Hamp- 
shire, 1875, p. 422. The same word probably appears in Cohoes, the 
name of a town on the Mohawk in Albany County, New York. Near 


VOCABULARY 85 


Cohoes is Boght, an old but small village, named from the Dutch 
word for bend, ‘‘in reference to a bend in the Mohawk,” French, 
Gazeteer of New York (1860), p. 166. Apparently the Dutch word 
Boght is merely a translation of an older Indian name for the same 
locality. 

The word run as a colloquial American word for a stream of water, 
as in Bull Run, etc., had an early origin in the phrase ‘‘a run of water,”’ 
meaning a stream, Huntington Records, p. 86 (1666), and often. It 
occurs in the Hempstead Records, I, 314 (1679), ‘‘the run Called 
Jonsons run,” also I, 167 (1665). The New English Dictionary gives 
two earlier citations, one for 1605 and another for 1652, and describes 
the word as American and northern British dialect. The earlier mean- 
ing of creek as a branch of the sea has been generally extended in 
America to mean a small fresh-water stream, though this use is not 
yet very common in New England, where such streams are usually 
called brooks. The popular pronunciation of the word is as though 
it were spelled crick. Early examples of the word in this sense are 
not found, but appear abundantly in the eighteenth century, Thorn- 
ton’s earliest being for 1674, and the next not until 1737. Webster, 
in the dictionary of 1828, says the word means “‘in some of the 
American States, a small river. This sense is not justified by ety- 
mology, but as streams often enter into creeks and small bays or form 
them, the name has been extended to small streams in general.” 

The method of portioning out the common lands to the townsmen 
of the first New England communities has led to the general Ameri- 
can use of lot to designate a limited section of land. Ordinarily the 
word now means a portion of land facing a street and meant to be a 
site for a building. A fifty-foot lot means a lot with a street front 
fifty feet wide. Originally, however, lots were of various kinds, home 
lots, swamp lots, wood lots, pasture lots, etc. This usage still remains 
in New England where what would elsewhere be called fields are 
commonly called lots. From this usage was derived also the familiar 
popular saying, ‘‘to cut across lots,” that is, to go over the fields 
instead of around by the road, or metaphorically, to follow economy 
rather than formality in any procedure. The practice of drawing 


86 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


lots was continued down into the eighteenth century. The town of 
Lunenburg, Lunenburg Records, p. 24 (1721), paid for ‘‘Travil and 
Expene When The Lotts Were Drawn at Concord,” and the records 
contain, p. 58, a list of all the lots in the town with “‘The names of 
those That first Drew them.” References to the drawing of lots in 
the seventeenth century are numerous. At Dedham it was voted 
in 1669, Dedham Records, IV, 187, “‘that the proprietors at Paw- 
comptucke should draw Lotts in the first oportunitie, that it might 
be better knowen wher each mans propriety will lye.” In the Nor- 
walk Records, p. 60 (1671), the agreement is recorded that ‘‘all those 
men that now draw lots with their neighbors, shall stand to their lots 
that now they draw.” If one is surprised that the Puritan fathers 
employed so worldly a method as drawing lots to decide important 
matters, it should be remembered that they had scripture authority 
in Acts I, 24—26, for so doing. 

In connection with the lots of the colonial settlements a use of 
the word frontier occurs which shows interestingly the change in 
meaning of that word. In American history the frontier has been a 
moving border land between civilization and the desert. Perhaps its 
meaning in the following passage from the Hempstead Records, I, 37 
(1658), is essentially the same: ‘“‘it is ordered by the Townesmen 
of Hempsteede for this present yeare, That all ye fencis of ye 
frontiere lotts that runn into ye field shall bee substantially and 
suffissiently fenced by ye 25th day of this present monthe of Aprill,”’ 
the penalty for neglect being five shillings, ‘“‘unto ye use of ye towne.” 

A geographical word folly occurs in the Hempstead Records, I, 309 
(1677), ‘‘there was given to Thomas sothard a small pese of land lying 
betwene his folly and the ould ox-paster”; also I, 320 (1678), 
‘“‘there was given to Nathaniell Pearsall . . . on the west side of his 
folly.” In the New English Dictionary one finds the dialectal word 
folly, meaning a clump of trees on the top of a hill. The only two 
citations given are one for 1880, the other for 1888. Are these pas- 
sages in the Hempstead Records early illustrations of the same word? 
The word is certainly topographical, but whether it means a hill or 
not, the context does not make evident. Near Wilmington, Delaware, 


VOCABULARY 87 


is a place called Folly Woods. As a second guess one might derive 
the word from Dutch vaalje, a little valley, the valley of a brook, a 
word, however, not on record. The diminutive -7e in Dutch words 
regularly becomes -y, and Dutch aa [a:] would be represented in 
English by o [9]. The only modification would thus be the change of 
initial v to f, which might well take place through popular etymology. 

Another word in the Hempstead Records which seems to be of 
geographical meaning has defied explanation. It occurs in the 
phrase ‘‘at the south sid of John Carmans tilsom,” I, 291 (1672), a 
piece of land containing three acres being thus described. At a town 
meeting, I, 290 (1672), there was given ‘‘to John Pine a home lott 
by his fathers tilsom an privilig to kepe half a dusen Cattell in the 
sumer.”” Another piece of land is likewise described as ‘‘lying on the 
south sid of John Carmans toylsum the land Containing two or three 
eakers,”’ I, 291 (1672). At an earlier town meeting, I, 98 (1661), the 
town gave to Thomas Jeacokex, that is Jaycocks, ‘‘three Acors of 
Land Liing att the South west Corner of John Carmons Tille sume, 
Provided itt be no hindernce to Any highway.”’ The word occurs 
most frequently with reference to John Carman’s land, but the refer- 
ence to John Pine’s tilsom seems to make it general. 

Another unexplained word, though not geographical, in the Hemp- 
stead Records, I, 342 (1675), occurs in the phrase ‘‘to pine the eare- 
bred,” this phrase being used in connection with a cart and wheels 
made by John Jennings. The purchaser agreed to pay for the “Cart 
and Whels” when Jennings should ‘‘pine the earebred.” Perhaps 
pine is for pin, and bred probably means board, and if eare is the old- 
fashioned word for ploughing, the whole phrase might mean ‘‘to pin 
the plough-board.”” This meaning, however, does not fit well with 
the cart and wheels of which the earebred is apparently a part. 

An unexplained bird name, chirie birds, occurs in the Dedham 
Records, III, 19 (1656), and so often. But perhaps this is merely 
cherry birds. 

The verb improve and the noun improvement were in the early 
periods of colonial New England used in senses which are now no 
longer ordinarily attached to the words. As now used the words 


88 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


apply to buildings, fences, etc., constructed on land which by being 
placed there may be said to improve the land in the sense of making 
it more useful for man’s purposes. One may even hear of improve- 
ments being made on a river, meaning the building of dams or bridges 
where they are necessary. This use of the word is directly derivable 
from the general value of the word in the sense to make better. The 
special American use of the word, often cited by critics as an illustra- 
tion of Americanism, gave it the generalized meaning of to employ, 
use, occupy, without special reference to the notion of making better, 
though obviously this notion often lies very near. Thus we may 
improve the occasion to do something, or the busy bee improves each 
shining hour. Asis pointed out by Logan Pearsall Smith, The English 
Language, p. 224, the generalized use is old, improve, improvement 
being terms of Law French “ originally employed to describe the proc- 
ess of enclosing waste land and bringing it into cultivation.” From 
this the transition to the meaning of making profitable use of any- 
thing is easy. Under improve, the New English Dictionary remarks 
that “the ancient sense, or something akin to it, was retained in the 
17-18th century in the American colonies.” But the fact is that the 
ancient senses were not all exactly alike. Thus in the Plymouth 
Records, I, 43 (1660), special provision is made for the disposition of 
trees which have been cut down and had the bark removed, if the 
person who cuts down the trees ‘‘shall . . . not Improve the bodyes 
of such trees soe peeled.”” But other uses are still more general. It 
was decreed, I, 54 (1663), that if any one cut wood at certain pro- 
hibited places, he should “‘forfeit all such wood to the townes use; to 
be Improved for the use of the minnester”’; also that no one ‘‘under 
pretence of hiering of servants shall Improve and Imploy any man or 
boy that hath no Right to the Commons of the Towne,” I, 72 (1664). 
The town agreed, I, 117 (1670), that the salary of ‘‘all such as are 
improved in any publicke place” should be ‘‘accoumpted as Ratable 
stocke.” The earliest example of this American use of improve in 
Thornton and the New English Dictionary is from 1677, and no 
British occurrences are cited. It is almost certain, however, that 
the usage was brought to New England from England. It is found 


VOCABULARY 89 


in the earliest of the town records, too early to have developed upon 
American soil. ) 

Many other terms of varied meaning which arose in the process 
of occupying the land and which have in part or wholly passed out 
of use as the particular stage of civilization which brought them 
into being has been left behind, occur as one reads early American 
records. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the word 
yeoman still survived as a designation for what has later come to be 
generally called a farmer. In the town records a tiller of the soil is 
occasionally designated as yeoman, just as a carpenter or mason 
would be given his distinctive trade name. The term was a favorite 
one with Noah Webster, who was fond of describing the landholders 
of Massachusetts and Connecticut as the yeomanry of New Eng- 
land. The word is now archaic and poetic in American use, except 
as it survives in the official terminology of the United States navy. 

The words settle, settler, settlement, are self-explanatory and have 
had an obvious history. The associations of the word planter are 
now mainly with the plantations of the South, and the word has been 
immortalized, for St. Louis at least, by the name of the Planters 
Hotel. In earlier periods, however, both plantation and planter 
were used in the North also as equivalents of settlement, settler, or 
farmer. Governor Hutchinson, in the preface to his history of 
Massachusetts Bay, speaks of the “importation of planters”? from 
England to that region. The patent of the Plymouth Company, 
1620, was “for planting and governing that country called New 
England.” In the Huntington Records, p. 403 (1684), p. 407 (1684), 
and often, planter means merely farmer or husbandman. The same 
use occurs in the Hempstead Records, as at I, 34 (1660), and often 
elsewhere. The older use survives in the last stanza of Woodworth’s 
Old Oaken Bucket, ‘‘As fancy reverts to my father’s plantation.” 

The word homestead has an interesting seventeenth-century 
variant in homestall, in Watertown Records, Land Grants, etc., p. 20, 
and often in these records. A variant of settle, settler which was 
formerly in use was seat, seater, for which a few citations are given by 
Thornton under seat and unseated. In the Journal of the House of 


90 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Burgesses, 1659-1693, p. 466, in Virginia, one finds the record of 
‘“‘a byll declareing wt Seating is,” and on p. 468, another ‘“‘giuing 
allowance to those yt by mistake Seat upon other mens lands.”’ 

The word tarry has now almost completely passed out of every- 
day use, though the word is quite familiarly known as a literary or 
somewhat poetic word. It was formerly, however, one of the com- 
mon words of the New Englander’s vocabulary, and is one of the 
words often met with in earlier realistic attempts to record rustic 
New England speech. Irving smiles at it in his Knickerbocker His- 
tory, Book III, Chap. VIII, remarking that ‘‘a Yankee farmer is in a 
constant state of migration, tarrying occasionally here and there.”’ 

Other archaisms which persist in familiar speech are carry, in the 
sense of conduct, escort, as in the song, Carry me back to old Virgima, 
or carry a horse to water, Sherwood, A Gazeteer (1837), or in the phrase 
of rustic gallantry, May I carry you home? and the word razse, in the 
sense of to rear or foster a person. Both of these words are now more 
general in the South than elsewhere, but they seem merely to be 
local survivals there of formerly more general uses. In Hasthampton 
Records, II, 452 (1699), a sum of money is paid ‘“‘to W™ Rose for 
Carring Sarah whitehar [Whittier] away three dayes,”’ and again, 
II, 458, advice is taken “‘about Carrying her to Docter Beateman.” 
As for raise examples are found in the New English Dictionary as 
early as 1601, though the dictionary describes the usage as now 
chiefly found in the United States. Thornton’s examples are abun- 
dant, though they do not distinguish between raise as applied to 
human beings and as applied to animals and plants. Webster, in 
the dictionary of 1828, says that ‘‘the English now use grow in regard 
to crops, as, to grow wheat. ‘This verb intransitive has never been 
used in New England in a transitive sense, until recently some 
persons have adopted it from the English books. We always use 
raise [of crops], but in New England it is never applied to the breed- 
ing of the human race, as it is in the southern states.’ The polite 
equivalent for raise as applied to children is to rear. 

The word to girdle as applied to trees, one of the methods by 
which trees were killed to aid in the more rapid clearing of the land, 


VOCABULARY 91 


is mentioned by Webster in the dictionary of 1828 as an American 
use. The word has outlived pioneer days and is still in familiar use. 
When the trees were cut down and rolled together to be burnt, the 
neighbors came to assist in what was called a log-rolling, a social 
function that has passed out of existence, leaving the word, how- 
ever, with a political metaphorical meaning. 

The American sidewalk, in England footway or pavement, is an 
old word for which the earliest citation in the New English Dictionary 
is for 1739. This was then an English use of the word, but now 
the word has fallen out of favor in England, but has become the 
universal word in America. Thornton gives abundant examples 
from 1817 and later. A somewhat rare American word is pave, 
meaning sidewalk or pavement. A form pavé also occurs infre- 
quently, being merely the French past participle. It is not clear 
whether pave arose as a transference of the verb to pave to a noun use, 
or as a contraction of pavement. It may have been, however, merely 
an Anglicization of French pavé. It occurs in Carlton, The New 
Purchase (1843), p. 65: ‘“‘The pave [italicized by the author who 
commonly italicizes what he regards as Americanisms] was, of course, 
dust sometimes, sometimes mortar,” and also p. 514: ‘‘This pave 
[a line of hewed logs] was used in miry times.”” Other examples are 
given in Thornton. 

The good old-fashioned word pillowbers for pillow-cases occurs in 
Southold Records, I1, 216 (1686), and a number of times elsewhere in 
the town records. This is the word Chaucer uses in the Prologue 
to the Canterbury Tales, line 694, when he describes the Pardoner as 
having a pilwe-beer which he tries to palm off as the Virgin’s veil. 
A weakened form of the compound household was formerly widely 
current, as in housel stuff, Southold Records, II, 19 (1678), housald 
stuff, Hempstead Records, I, 120 (1662). This word has survived in 
the Georgia dialect of the nineteenth century, as recorded by R. M. 
Johnston, Mr. Billingslea (1888), p. 135, “in her housle an’ kitchen 
furnicher.” 

Since agriculture and the crafts occupied so much of the atten- 
tion of the early settlers in America, one naturally finds the language 


92 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


of the rustic and mechanical pursuits exceptionally rich in obsolete 
or partly obsolete terms. The use of corn in the general sense of 
grain, and more specifically of wheat was brought to America from 
England, and until Indian corn came to be the more prominent crop 
in the agriculture of the colonies, the word continued to be used in 
the English sense. To distinguish wheat from Indian corn, it was 
sometimes called English corn, Watertown Records, p. 23 (1651). 
The name mazze for Indian corn has always been learned and literary 
in America. The first example of breadstuff(s) in the New English 
Dictionary is from Thomas Jefferson, 1793, and it is recorded by 
Pickering as an Americanism. It is still used, but not now so com- 
monly as in the days of river freighting. 

In the Watertown Records, p. 123 (1675), we read that the school- 
master is to be allowed ‘‘a fortnites time in haysill,’’ evidently for 
the purpose of getting in his hay. The word haysill means haying 
season, and is recorded in the New English Dictionary as dialectally 
peculiar in England to East Anglia. In connection with haying 
another obsolete word, hurry, occurs in the early records. In the 
Dedham Records, IV, 5 (1659), we read of a “load or hurry,” and the 
word, spelled hurie, occurs again, IV, 47 (1662). The New English 
Dictionary records hurry as a verb, in the sense to transport or 
convey, but only in the northern dialect and with the earliest ex- 
ample for 1847. Nashe, however, in his Lenten Stuffe, in 1559, 
used the word hurrie currie, meaning a car, chariot, and harry carry 
is recorded for Yarmouth, the first citation in the New English Dic- 
tionary being for 1493, the next and only other one, for 1870. As 
Nashe wrote his Lenten Stuffe at Yarmouth in praise of the Yarmouth 
red herring, his use probably reflected a local custom, and the Ded- 
ham usage may also have been derived from the same locality. In 
the Dedham Records occurs another rustic archaism in the use of the 
word dooled, to dole, as in ‘“‘all high wayes . . . to be well marked 
and dooled,” III, 34 (16387), and also in reference to land granted to 
John Haward, ‘“‘nere his house lott as it is marked and dooled out 
allready,” III, 98 (1643). As the quotations indicate, the word 
means provided with posts or stones or similar marks to indicate 


VOCABULARY 93 


the bounds of property. British examples will be found in the 
New English Dictionary. The injury done by cattle or swine not 
kept within bounds is frequently mentioned as scathes, as in Dedham 
Records, III, 43 (1638), ‘‘all scathes done by any Swyne shalbe 
satisfyed.”” On p. 47 (1638) the word is printed as scares, but this is 
probably an editorial error, since the connection of the word with 
standard scathe, scathing is obvious. 

Another obsolete word for damage of this sort is the word vari- 
ously spelled stray, strey, stry. In Plymouth Records, I, 114 (1670), 
complaint is made ‘‘of Great stray and wast of Timber’’; and an 
order was passed, I, 273 (1699), ‘‘for the preventing the strey of 
timber,” and at another time, I, 270 (1699), ‘‘to prevent further 
strey of the Comons.” In the Watertown Records, p. 95 (1669), we 
read of ‘“‘stry done in Corne.” This word in its several forms is 
merely an aphetic modification of destroy, and examples of stroy 
occur in Bunyan and other authors cited in the New English Dic- 
tionary. ‘The form stry is recorded in the New English Dictionary 
only for East Anglia, and first for 1825. 

The harm done by straying cattle made the office of town 
pounder one of importance, and pounding regulations are fully 
specified in the early town records. In Hempstead Records, 1, 27 
(1657), mention is made of ‘‘Charges and powndeg,”’ and I, 101 
(1661), of pouwnedge. The pener, penner is mentioned, I, 300-301 
(1661), and in the form pinder, I, 93 (1660). A noun formed from 
the verb drive was formerly used in senses now lost, as in Watertown 
Records, p. 85 (1665), ‘‘drifft of Cattell,’ meaning driving of cattle. 
In Braintree Records, p. 4 (1652), occurs the word dwrft way, 
drive way, and this word occurs in these records a century later, 
as in drift way, p. 164 (1731), p. 605 (1791), still in the sense of 
passage or driveway. It occurs also in the Southold Records, II, 
485 (1719), ‘“‘a drift way from the s* open way going into ye s% 
Little Neck.” The word drift way still occurs in Connecticut 
legal phraseology. | 

The word jade for horse, now only an archaic or poetic word, was 
formerly commonly current, as in the Hempstead Records, I, 182 


94. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


(1665), ‘‘Mary Willeses Reacord for gades”; I, 286 (1667), ‘“‘Jadgs 
or Cattle or other Cretors.” An officer mentioned in these records 
who perhaps has given the proper name Howard to the language, 
is the hoaward, I, 235 (1667), the hog warden, hired for ‘‘y’e Keep- 
ing y’e ffield for the preservation of the Corne.”’ 

The word shoat, a young pig, is frequently cited as a word which 
has passed out of use in England, but which persists in America. 
The earliest American citation in Thornton is for 1775, but the word 
occurs in the Huntington Records, p. 435 (1686), spelled shots, and in 
Watertown Records, p. 48 (1656), spelled shoates. It occurs in the 
Southold Records, I, 440 (1658). A similar American survival is the 
word wilt, to wither, the earliest occurrence of which in Thornton is 
for 1809. A rustic word is contained in the Lunenburg Records, 
p. 93 (1735), ‘‘Hifer-Hors, mare, or Colt,”’ which has not survived. 
Hoss-beast, for horse, occurs in Carlton, The New Purchase, p. 119, 
and often. In giving the ages of horses, it was customary to give 
the number of full years of the horse’s age and to speak of the uncom- 
pleted year as the advantage, as in Southold Records, 1, 450 (1667), 
‘“‘a year and vantage colt,” that is a colt something over a year old. 
An equivalent phrase, facetiously applied to a man, occurs in R. M. 
Johnston, Mr. Billingslea, p. 4, ‘forty three and the rise,’’ meaning 
something over forty-three years old. 

In the Huntington Records, p. 435 (1686), occurs the phrase, ‘‘Cart 
yoak and Cart clevey.”” The word clevey is manifestly the same as 
the word clevis now current. Other examples of a spelling without 
final s are recorded in the New English Dictionary, and the suggestion 
is made that clevis was felt to be a plural and thus a new singular, 
clevy, was formed. The popular form of the word, however, is still 
clevis, and moreover the nature of the object does not suggest a 
plural idea. The word clevis is also pronounced with final consonant 
voiceless, whereas if the word were felt to be a plural, the s would 
be voiced. The etymological origin of the word is unknown, though 
from the uses of the clevis to hold two things together, one thinks 
naturally of French clef as perhaps providing a clue to the logical 
content of the word. If the word was French in origin, the form 


VOCABULARY 95 


clevey may be due merely to French pronunciation, as in the word 
cherry from Old Norman French cherise. 

In connection with French it may be mentioned that the word 
vendue, common in earlier American usage in the meaning of public 
sale, for which the earliest citation in Thornton is for 1762, occurs 
also in the Huntington Records, as in “‘outery or vandue,” p. 467 
(1686), and several other places. It occurs still earlier in the Hemp- 
stead Records, I, 341 (1681), vandu; the word outcry occurs in I, 27 
(1657). Madam Knight, in her Journal (1704), pp. 52 ff., describes 
some vendues which she attended in New York and found entertain- 
ing. 

Cooper, in his Notions, II, 116, speaks of the word cradle, an 
implement used in cutting grain, as a strange word, and he adds in 
a footnote that he ‘“‘does not know whether this implement is an 
American invention or not.” It was not an American invention, 
nor was the word peculiarly American. It occurs in this sense as 
early as the latter sixteenth century, and like many other words, 
it has become archaic only because modern machinery has done 
away with the kind of labor which it designated. 

Two interesting words of the New Haven Records are haunt and 
hanker. On p. 62 (1641), an entry reads that ‘‘none shall hant their 
hoggs thatt way ... but haunt them that way where their 2d 
division lyes.”’ The word is here used in the causative sense of its 
primary meaning, cause their hogs to haunt, or frequent, a certain 
region. The interest of the word hanker lies in the fact that early 
records preserve a use of it in about the same sense as haunt, which 
was its original sense and the use from which the metaphorical mean- 
ing, to long for, was derived. The word occurs in an early Indian 
treaty, New Haven Records, p. 3 (1637), in which a certain sachem 
‘“‘his counsell and company doe hereby covenant ... y* none of 
them shall henceforth hanker about any of y® English ‘houses.’”’ 
This is close to the meaning of the word in Milton, 1641, “But let 
us not . . . stand hankering and politizing,” see the New English 
Dictionary, under hanker. From the meaning of merely standing 
idly about it was easy for this word to take on pejorative senses, an 


96 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


exactly similar process being illustrated in the modern uses of the 
word loiter, lovtering. 


The names of many plants and products have appeared in various 
modified forms in American usage. The word which now commonly 
takes the orthographic form pumpkin is occasionally met with in its 
earlier form, as in pompions, New Haven Records, p. 234 (1646). In 
the Hempstead Records, I, 304 (1676), however, it already appears 
in the form pumpkins. By origin the word comes from French 
pompom, which undergoes several phonetic modifications in English 
use. The early English forms are pompeon, pompion, pumpion; the 
ending was then assimilated to an English ending in -kin, giving 
pumpkin, examples of which are cited in the New English Dictionary 
from the middle of the seventeenth century. The vegetable itself 
has been so constantly one of the common products of the American 
garden that the name has readily taken on popular forms and uses and 
has thus come to be pronounced as though it were written punkin. 
Madam Knight in her Journal (1704), p. 37, describes a meeting of 
a court of justice in a field in Connecticut at which ‘‘the bench” for 
the justices consisted of pompions; but later, p. 47, she speaks of 
‘“Pumpkin and Indian mixt Bred”’ of awful aspect, and at Stonington, 
p. 67, she had ‘‘Rost Beef and pumpkin sause for supper.” ‘‘The 
pumpkin, or pompion,” says Peters, General History of Connecticut 
(1781), p. 186, ‘‘is one of the greatest blessings, and held very sacred 
in New England. . . . Of its meat are made beer, bread, custards, 
sauce, molasses, vinegar and, on thanksgiving days, pies, as a substi- 
tute for what the Blue Laws brand as antichristian minced pies.” 
Peters also explains, p. 154, why New Englanders were called pumpkin 
heads. As every male was required to have his hair cut round by 
a cup, ‘‘when cups were not to be had, they substituted the hard 
shell of a pumpkin, which being put on the head every Saturday, 
the hair is cut by the shell all round the head.” Thus early did the 
pumpkin engage the playful fancy of the American native. The 
pumpkin, or punkin, in “Peter, Peter, punkin eater,’’ combined with 
the unmistakable echo of the rhythm of Yankee Doodle, is good cir- 


VOCABULARY 97 


cumstantial evidence that this rhyme is of American origin. The 
festivities of an American Halloween are not complete without a 
pumpkin, and Ichabod Crane also helps to keep interest alive in the 
pumpkin, even for those who have never eaten pumpkin pie or seen a 
pumpkin growing. The pumpkin, because of its habit of growing 
sometimes to prodigious size, has also given origin to the facetious 
phrase, some pumpkins, abundant examples of which are given in 
Thornton. The word has also been extended to name other objects, 
as in punkin-seed, a kind of fish, and also a kind of boat, the point of 
connection being similarity in shape. Punkin Hollow as a place name 
is perhaps reminiscent of Sleepy Hollow. The tale of the pumpkin 
vine that grew so fast that it wore the pumpkins out dragging them 
along the ground is a bit of characteristic American humor and 
folklore. 

Another species of American ‘‘pie timber,” the huckleberry, also 
started with a name that has been much obscured. The berry is the 
same as the whortleberry, or hurtleberry, as the word is spelled in 
Plymouth Records, 1, 153. The transition from hurtle- to huckle- is 
easy, for the r before ¢ being silent in New England pronunciation, 
one must only account for the change of ¢ to k, and this is a frequently 
occurring phonetic process in naive speech. 

Along the coast, and especially on. Long Island, the term creek- 
thatch as the name of salt water grass was very common, and is 
recorded by the Century Dictionary as still current. The Southold 
Records, I, 383 (1688), speak of ‘“‘Seagrass or Kreekthatch lying at 
Southarbor,” and I, 86 (1659), of “‘Creek thatch meadow.” The 
first element of the word was sometimes crick and sometimes creek, 
both forms having been common since at least early in the seventeenth 
century. Both forms occur side by side, I, 168 (1681), ‘‘ Krick thatch 
with the sunken grass at the mouth of Goose Kreek.’’ In Southold 
Records, II, 50 (1685), we find Crickthach, spelled Cricksach, II, 364 
(1697). It is spelled creekthath, II, 26 (1695), and probably as houses 
were then not thatched but shingled, the sense, and therefore the 
form of the second element was becoming obscured. In the latter 
entries of the Southold Records, a descriptive term often accompanies 


‘ 


98 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


the word, as at II, 409 (1705), ‘“‘Creekthatch or Salt Marsh,” or IT, 
246 (1694), ‘“‘krick thatch or sunken meadow.” In 1656 a certain 
enterprising citizen was granted ‘‘the privilidge of having one half 
of all the Crickthatch or meadow which he shall make or cause to 
grow by art and industrie or shall be made to grow” within a specified 
area, II, 507. 

The word sauce meaning vegetables has long been one of the stock 
words in literary versions of New England rustic dialects. It is re- 
corded by Thornton under sauce and long sauce, though Thornton’s 
earliest citation does not go back further than 1802. The word is 
mentioned by Webster in his Dissertations, 1789, but he mentions 
the word only to discuss its pronunciation, not its meaning. The 
pronunciation was frequently under fire, the debated point being 
whether the vowel should be [a:] or [o:]. In New England the pre- 
ferred pronunciation was [a1], and writers of humorous dialect often 
indicate this sound by such spellings as sarse, sarce, saace. A still 
lower dialectal stage was reached when [sais] became sass [sees], 
just as the word saucy becomes sassy in dialect speech. It is extremely 
probable that this word in the sense of vegetables was current in New 
England use long before the earliest recorded instances, that it was 
in fact current throughout the whole of the American period and was 
brought over to this country from England. The citations in the 
New English Dictionary localize it in recent British use in East Anglia, 
and it is known also elsewhere in England. The citations also show 
how readily the transition from a piquant sauce to be eaten with 
meat to a vegetable or fruit sauce could be made. But the New 
English Dictionary goes much too far when it puts down as usage in 
the United States long sauce, meaning beets, carrots and parsnips, 
and short sauce, meaning potatoes, turnips, onions, pumpkins, etc. 
The word distinctly belongs to New England localities and to New 
England tradition, and may now be described as a New England 
archaism. In fact, it probably had a more vigorous life in New Eng- 
land humorous dialect writing than elsewhere, and this special 
emphasis has probably contributed to its almost complete disappear- 
ance even in New England. A typical literary use of the word is that 


VOCABULARY 99 


by John Neal, in his novel Randolph, I, 279 (1823), where one of the 
characters, Sarah, a Southerner, writes to another, Juliet, explaining 
the diminishing ill-will between the South and the North. Speaking 
of herself and her community she says that ‘‘we are no longer in their 
[the Yankees] opinion, a people of billiard players, slave dealers and 
horse jockies; nor they in ours, a people made up of dealers in wooden 
ware, and ‘long and short sarse,’ as, it is said, they call vegetables, 
turnips, onions, potatoes being round sauce; which they pronounce 
sarse, and carrots, beats, parsnips, etc., long sauce.’”’ In all this it 
looks as though there were a distinct element of literary fancy. The 
legend indeed might have gone further than long, short and round 
sauce, except for the fact that these terms exhaust all the obvious 
geometrical forms of the vegetable world. 

An interesting survival is the use of the word walnut occasionally 
in old-fashioned New England speech as the name for the fruit of 
the hickory tree. In general American usage of the present, walnut 
means only the fruit of the black walnut tree. But walnut 
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in New England 
commonly meant the hickory tree. In the Norwalk Records, p. 94 
(1699), “‘it was voted and agreed that all persons as carry fire wood 
to Mr. Buckingham, shall be allowed for each load of wallnut wood 
three shillings and six pence, and for each load of oake wood is 
allowed two shillings and six pence.” In the Lunenburg Records, 
p. 40 (1727), walnut trees are mentioned several times, with others, as 
oaks of different kinds, ‘‘pople,” birch, chestnut, maple, basswood, 
but no hickory. The word hickory was not in use in early New Eng- 
land, and it came into general American use through the South and 
Southwest, where it was necessary to have words to keep the black 
walnut and hickory distinct. The earliest citation for hickory, a 
word of ultimate Indian origin, in Thornton, is for 1705, in a Virginia 
book, and the only other two of the eighteenth century are also from 
the South. Several earlier citations are given in the New English 
Dictionary, also from the South. In New England, however, the 
black walnut did not exist, though hickories were common, and it is 
not now found in that region except here and there where specimens 


100 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


have been planted. When John Adams writes of being busy, Works, 
II, 201, ‘“‘trimming the walnuts and oaks, and felling the pines and 
savins and hemlocks”’ on his farm, by walnuts we know he meant 
hickories, for when he made his first visit to the Middle States, he 
saw his first black walnut trees. ‘‘ At Trenton ferry [in New Jersey],” 
he writes, Works, II, 357, ‘‘we saw four very large black walnut trees. 
. . . It seems that these trees are plenty in these southern Provinces; 
all the black walnut timber which is used by our cabinet makers in 
Boston is brought from the southern Provinces.” A further extension 
of the use of walnut in America is that by which it has now come to 
mean primarily what is sometimes more specifically called the English 
walnut. The varied history and original meaning of walnut would 
carry one far beyond the limits of American usage, but they are 
fully illustrated by the comment and the citations in the New English 
Dictionary. The name of the pecan, a kind of hickory, is of Indian 
origin, through French, and came into American English, like hickory, 
from the South and Southwest. The first example of pecan in 
Thornton is for the year 1773. The pronunciation is variously 
[ptka:n’], [ptkeen’], or ['pi:‘kam]. 

The walnut appears in the Hempstead Records, I, 25 (1657), in 
the phrase ‘‘the wannute holow’’; and in the Southold Records, II, 
57 (1685), we read of ‘‘a wornutt tree that separates between Mr. 
Weles and myselfe.”’ 

The word carf is frequently used in the early records with refer- 
ence to the cutting down of trees. In Dedham Records, III, 63 (1639), 
occurs mention of a tree twelve inches thick ‘‘at the Carfe.” In the 
New Haven Records, p. 54 (1641), ‘‘a kerfe or planke of 2 inches thick”’ 
is mentioned. The word obviously is related to the word carve, to 
cut, and seems to have meant the butt end of a log, or even a thick 
board. The American citations supplement interestingly those 
contained in the New English Dictionary. Thornton has only one 
example of this word, for 1897, from W. D. Howells, Landlord at 
Inon’s Head, Chap. VII: ‘He lifted his axe, and struck it into the 
carf on the tree.”’ The scene of this story is laid in New England, 
and evidently Howells was repeating a word heard in that region. 


VOCABULARY 101 


It is, therefore, a remarkable instance of obscure survival and shows 
that from the early seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century 
the word must have had an existence in oral tradition. The identity 
of the word is undoubted, though it is possible that Howells has not 
used it in a precisely idiomatic way. 

An unexplained odizar bush is mentioned in Plymouth Records, I, 
199. 


Various manual activities called for a number of words which 
have passed out of use. The word langle in the sense of bind, hold 
together, occurs in Watertown Records, p. 95 (1669), in the phrase 
“side langueled with Iron Fetters.’ In the Huntington Records, 
p. 9 (1657), occurs the phrase ‘“‘wampum y* is well strung or steaud.”’ 
The verb steeve or steave, as used here, means evidently to put to- 
gether in some kind of manageable or portable shape. It corre- 
sponds fairly closely therefore to a Scottish use of the word in the 
sense to make firm or stiff, or perhaps to a more general use of the 
word in the meaning to pack, for example, the hold of a ship. This 
latter is mainly an American use, and examples are cited in the New 
English Dictionary. Thornton gives examples of stived up, in the 
sense of crowded together, for 1851 and 1853. The passage in the 
Huntington Records seems to be an early example of the word in 
the sense of pack. 

In Dedham Records, III, 48 (1638), occurs the word brickstrieker, 
one who strikes, that is molds or makes bricks. This particular 
use of the word is now obsolete both in England and America. The 
New English Dictionary has three examples of this use of striker, 
for 1585, 1610, 1703. But in an advertisement in The Reportory, 
Boston, Nov. 22, 1808 (see Thornton, under stricken), bricks not yet 
dried are called ‘‘newly stricken bricks.’ The archaic past par- 
ticiple stricken is apparently now much more widely used in America 
than in England. It is common newspaper English as an adjective 
in the phrase “the stricken family,’’ and in courts of law, when a 
lawyer requests to have parts of the evidence removed from the 
record, he asks that it be ‘‘stricken out.” 


102 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


A kind of work akin to that of the brickstriker was that of the 
plasterer, or the dauber, as he was commonly called in the early 
records. In Dedham Records, III, 155 (1648), mention is made of 
‘‘daubing work,’ and the word is often used in reference to the 
building of the meeting houses. Since the meeting houses were made 
of sawed boards, not of rough hewn logs, the dauber’s task could 
not have been that of filling in the cracks between the logs with 
mud, as was commonly done with log cabins. Occasional refer- 
ences to the difficulty of getting a competent person to do daubing 
work show also that his was a recognized trade, calling for profes- 
sional skill and experience. 

In the phrase widow’s weeds an old word weed still survives more 
or less in general comprehension. Originally the word, from Old 
English wed, meant equipment of various kinds, even a warrior’s 
weapons. It has been gradually restricted in meaning until now it 
would be applied only to a widow’s mourning garments. An earlier 
use in which the word seems to be restricted, on the contrary, to 
men’s mourning garments is found in the Lunenburg Records. When 
the minister of the town died, the town voted, p. 191 (1761), that 
‘‘they will Give the Late Rev’. M'. Stearns Brothers weed and 
Gloves and his Sisters Vails Handkerchiefs Gloves and Fans and his 
Sons in Law weeds and Gloves.” When Samuel Payson, the suc- 
cessor of Mr. Stearns, died a few years later, the town voted, p. 202 
(1763), to give ‘‘the Father and Brethren of the deceas’d Weeds, 
and Gloves, to the Mother of the deceas’d and to the 1% Sister 
Vails Handkerchiefs and Gloves.’”’ At the same time they voted 
“to give Mrs. Elizabeth Stearns a Neat handsome Suit of Mourning.” 

Longstreet, Georgia Scenes, p. 151, records a long forgotten mili- 
tary word, in the commands Poise, foolk! Cock, foolk! 'The word 
foolk he explains as ‘‘a contraction and corruption of ‘Firelock.’ 
Thus: ‘Firelock,’ ‘f’lock,’ ‘foolk.’”? The explanation does not make 
clear whether the IJ in foolk was pronounced or not, but probably it 
was silent. In Longstreet occurs another word which is now charac- 
teristically Southern but was formerly also current in New England. 
This is the word hound dogs, Georgia Scenes, p. 213, meaning hunting 


VOCABULARY 103 


dogs. This occurs as early as 1649 in the Dedham Records, III, 162, 
where the town action is recorded that ‘‘care be taken that the 
young hound doggs be in time taught to hunt.” 

One of Webster’s wild etymologies in the Dictionary of 1828 is 
registered under the word nan. This, he says, is ‘‘a Welsh word 
signifying what, used as an interrogative,” and he adds that “‘it has 
been extensively used within my memory by the common people 
of New England.” The meaning of the word Webster has defined 
correctly, and examples of it are met with not infrequently even in 
early nineteenth century literature. Cooper uses it, in the form 
anan, The Pioneers, Chap. XXVI, and elsewhere, as one of the 
picturesque features of Natty’s dialect speech. In the form nan 
it occurs in Carlton, The New Purchase, p. 212. Some of the early 
grammarians mention it as a provincialism, and its literary occur- 
rences are always in a popular dialect. In origin it is merely the 
older English anon, and the development in meaning is clearly 
indicated by the citations in the New English Dictionary. 

Another archaic formula, one of polite greeting, is frequently 
illustrated in the dialect speech of Carlton’s New Purchase, as in the 
following, p. 67: ‘‘Once in a domestic meeting, we were listening 
devoutly to the preacher, when a neighbor came... and after 
tying his horse, putting the stirrups over the saddle and pulling down 
his tow-linen trousers, he advanced to the house and startled both 
minister and people by administering a smart prefatory rap to the 
door cheek, and drawling out in a slow, but very loud tone, the 
usual formula— ‘W-e-ll—who—keeps—house?’ when he squeezed 
in among us and took a seat as innocent as a babe.” 


More interesting than those records of language which illustrate 
the disappearance of words from use are the indications of life and 
creative activity to be observed in the emergence of new words or 
of new meanings in old words to designate fresh experiences. In a 
new and rapidly developing country such experiences would nat- 
urally be varied and numerous, and the developments in vocab- 
ulary would more or less keep pace with the changing notions and 


104 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


adventures of the settlers in the new regions. First of all there was 
a whole new world of natural objects to be named when the Euro- 
peans landed in America. In many instances the objects to be 
named were so much like those already well known in the old world 
that the old names could simply be transferred without change. In 
others the native Indians had names that were learned at the time 
that the objects themselves entered the strangers’ experience, and 
thus names like opossum, raccoon, skunk, musquash (Anglicized into 
musk-rat), woodchuck, probably with modifications through popular 
etymology, moose, terrapin, and others like these established them- 
selves in the language as used in America. The name of the very 
American buffalo, however, is not of Indian, but apparently of ulti- 
mately Italian origin. 

The katydid is American both in its name and in itself. The 
name is an echoic word made from the sound which the insect pro- 
duces. Just what this sound is one could not precisely tell from the 
spellings of the name, since these vary more or less. The name 
first appeared in poetry in Freneau’s To a katydid. Holmes has a 
poem on the katydid, entitled ‘‘To an Insect,’”’ Works, Cambridge 
edition, p. 7, and he appends a note, saying that he heard the insect 
at Providence, in Rhode Island, but does not remember hearing it at 
Cambridge, though it is well known in other towns in the neighbor- 
nood of Boston. Perhaps the sound of the insect was so familiar to 
Holmes at Cambridge that he never became conscious of it. Holmes 
spelled the word katydid, but Kennedy, Swallow-Barn (New York, 
1852), p. 26, writing about 1830, speaks of ‘‘the little catadid,” and 
the earliest citation of the word in Thornton, for 1800, gives it the 
form kittydid. When Frances Wright arrived in New York, one of 
the things that first caught her attention was the chorus of sound 
made in the dark by these insects. She asked her American friend 
what the sound was by which they were surrounded, but her friend 
answered, ‘‘I hear nothing, unless it be the cattydids?” ‘‘The 
catty-dids! And who, or what are they?”’ Arthur Singleton, 


1 Views of Society and Manners in America, by Frances Wright D’Arusmont, New 
York,/ 1821) p10. 


VOCABULARY 105 


Letters from the South and West, p. 62, writing in 1816, says that the 
insects are called katy dids ‘‘because one seems to say Katy did, 
and the other to reply Katy didn’t.” Thornton, from whom the 
foregoing citation was taken, also records the form Katydee for 1818 
in one of Woodworth’s poems. The name of the whippoorwill is 
also of echoic origin and was spelled in a variety of ways. The 
whippoorwill shares with the katydid the honor of being among 
the first subjects for poetry taken from American nature. A Sonnet 
to the Chick-Willow by John Davis appeared in the Monthly Magazine 
and American Review, II (1800), 480. A correspondent added, 
Vol. III, p. 11, a bit of information about the name of the bird as 
Whip-poor-Will, and still another correspondent, W. D. (William 
Dunlap?), Vol. III, 256-257, made some suggestions as to the dis- 
tribution of the various names of the bird, the ‘‘Goatsucker of Caro- 
lina, East-India Bat, Musqueto-Hawk, |’Engoulevent de la Caro- 
line, Chick-Willow, Chuck-Will’s-Widow, and Whip-poor-will.” A 
satirical Sonnet to John Davis, by Chick-Willow, Vol. III, 79, is 
further evidence that the whippoorwill as poetical material had 
made some stir in the end of the century literary circles of 
America. 

Other names of familiar American use are lightning bug, bullfrog, 
hoptoad, bug, a generic word for all insects, in England taken as refer- 
ring only to the bedbug. The American vocabulary would not have 
been adequate without a word for the mosquito, and this name, 
through a variety of spellings, and amplified by a number of face- 
tious additions, has definitely established itself. For mosquitoes of 
unusual size, the name gallinipers is illustrated by a number of ex- 
amples in Thornton. The size of American mosquitoes has long 
been a matter of comment. In a review of Weld’s Travels, the Quar- 
terly Review, II, 334, note, says that the only exaggeration in Weld’s 
book is the tale of a mosquito so big that it bit Washington through 
his leather boot. Facetious names for the mosquito, such as hum- 
ming-bird, pile driver, etc., are numerous, and the mosquitoes of 
certain regions, especially New Jersey, are nationally famous for 
size and ferocity. 


106 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The names of American fishes, however, have in very few in- 
stances added new words to the vocabulary of the English language. 
The perch, bass, pike, pickerel, trout, and most other names of 
fishes, are old words in the English vocabulary. Both the delectable 
shad and the contemptible sculpin bear good old English names. 
Does this mean that American fishes do not differ from British 
fishes, or merely that the casual observer does not note any except 
the most striking differences among fishes? Undoubtedly the lat- 
ter, for the silent, cold-blooded and unamusing fish cannot possibly 
make the same appeal to man’s interest and sympathy as the furry 
creatures of field and forest. One of the kinds of fish first to interest 
the colonists in America were the alewives, which came up the salt 
water streams in great numbers at certain seasons of the year, and 
which furnished the colonists with an important part of their diet. 
The town records of the seventeenth century contain frequent regu- 
lations for building of weirs and methods of taking the alewives. 
The name took several forms, the oldest, 1678, being aloofe, of which 
alewife, alewives is probably a corruption. Thornton also gives a 
passage containing the spelling old-wife. The ultimate etymology 
of the word, perhaps Indian, is uncertain. 

The American clam is sometimes referred to by its Indian name 
quahaug, also spelled cohog, but the common popular name has always 
been clam. The black-fish, also, is occasionally mentioned as the 
tautaug, but commonly it has had its English name. ‘The terrapin, 
however, and the muscalunge, this latter word being spelled in various 
ways, both of Indian origin, have safely established themselves in 
American usage. The gaspergou, or gaspergoo, or gasperoo is a 
Southern river fish, the name probably being from French gasparot. 
Thornton gives two citations for a Lafayette fish, one for 1843, the 
other for 1859. According to Bartlett, this fish appears in great 
abundance in the summer on the Jersey coast, and it was given this 
name ‘‘on account of its appearance one summer coinciding with the 
last visit of General Lafayette to America.” This sounds like an 
after the event explanation, though names undoubtedly are often 
given in just such casual fashion. Boys still fish for Lafayettes 


VOCABULARY 107 


on the Jersey coast in the summer. Some years ago, when upper 
Riverside Drive in New York was known as Lafayette Boulevard, 
fishermen along the shores of the Hudson caught a small fish, the 
tom cod, which they called Lafayettes, and the name was commonly 
supposed to come from the name of the boulevard. In connection 
with fishes, it may be observed that the chowder, adapted from French 
chaudieére, is mainly an American word, especially along the northern 
Atlantic coast, where the chowder chiefly flourishes. It may be 
noted also that the size of American fishes, as of other natives of the 
wild, must often have been the subject of complacent remark on the 
part of Americans to have made “‘a fish story”’ the American equiva- 
lent for drawing the long bow. 

Some other words naming objects of the natural world charac- 
teristically American may be loosely grouped together. Among 
these are familiar names of birds, such as blue jay, jay bird, bob-o- 
link, tanager, mocking bird, cat bird, bob-white. The name robin, 
like lark and yellowhammer, is an old English word applied in Amer- 
ica to a bird quite different from the bird of the same name in Eng- 
land. Some names of trees besides those already mentioned which 
are characteristically American are butternut, buttonwood, sycamore, 
quaking asp, cottonwood, gum, a bee-gum being a hollow gum in which 
wild bees have hived, sumach, pawpaw, persimmon, tulip tree, dog- 
wood. In the South the china berry tree is a familiar name and 
object. These words are not all strictly of American origin, but 
have become distinctive and familiar parts of the American vocabu- 
lary because the objects they name are such common features of the 
American landscape. 

With the wild inhabitants of a whole continent to name, it is 
evident that a rich field for the roving imagination was opened to 
the American romancer and pseudo-scientist. This was especially 
true after the occupation of the western country towards the Mis- 
sissippi. A poet of the early nineteenth century thus described the 
Mississippi Valley: 

‘Where now the sylvan deserts wide expand, 
And spread a gloomy grandeur o’er the land; 


108 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Where wild and huge amphibious monsters prowl, 
And bears and wolves and screaming panthers stroll; 
Beyond some years, not far remote the day, 
Children in crowds shall innocently play 

Along the streets, and o’er the village green 

Their balls rebound, and tow’ring kites be seen.”’ ! 


This western world appeared to the poet at the time in which he 
wrote as ‘‘the abode of men and monsters, wild and rude,” but he 
wisely does not attempt to designate any of his ‘‘huge amphibious 
monsters” by name. Others had not been so cautious and had made 
themselves targets for the shafts of the satirists. Brackenridge, in 
his Modern Chivalry, written during the latter eighteenth century, 
has a great deal to say about the Philosophical Society in Philadel- 
phia and the absurdities of the natural scientists, culminating in the 
tale of the rascal Teague O’ Regan, who had been tarred and feathered. 
Members of the Society were sent for to examine Teague, and they 
conclude, Vol. II, p. 136, that it, that is Teague, ‘‘is an animal of a 
species wholly new, and of a middle nature between a bird and a 
beast.”” The hoax is elaborately and amusingly carried out, and 
Teague finally comes out of it with a new name, Anthroposornis, or 
man-bird. 

A few years earlier the authors of the Anarchiad had poked fun 
at the members of a fictitious society of antiquaries, especially at the 
scientist who had discovered ‘‘a monstrous new-invented animal”’ 
which had hitherto escaped the notice of every zodlogist, and at 
another who ‘‘regaled his readers with a most notable catfish,” 
Anarchiad, ed. Riggs, p. 3. One section of the poem is also devoted 
to those Europeans who were ‘‘to invent so many curious theories, 
both in philosophy and history, for demonstrating the debility and 
diminution of nature in the western hemisphere, and for belittling 
the great objects on which they were to treat,” until 


‘Huge mammoth dwindle to a mouse’s size—: 
Columbia turkeys turn European flies :— 
Exotic birds, and foreign beasts, grow small, 
And man, the lordliest, shrink to least of all.’ 


1 Charles Mead, Mississippian Scenery, Philadelphia, 1819, p. 18. 


VOCABULARY 109 


In this same vein of early nineteenth century humorous satire, 
Cooper devoted Chapter VI of his Prazrie to an account of the sci- 
entific discoveries of Dr. Battius, a mild and harmless person at the 
worst. Cooper makes the doctor discover a new animal, the animal 
being really his own donkey which he has happened upon at night 
and taken for a monster which is learnedly and elaborately described. 
As this is an unknown genus, the discoverer names it after himself, 
Vespertilio Horribilis Americanus. 

Another American monster, supposed not to be humorous but 
terrible, was the title character in Robert Montgomery Bird’s Nick 
of the Woods, or the Jibbenainosay, published in 1837, though the 
scene of the story was set for Kentucky in 1782. The Jibbenainosay 
was a mysterious monster who killed Indians, always leaving upon 
their bodies a peculiar mark to show his work. ‘‘I never seed the 
crittur before,” says one of the characters who has just discovered 
one of Nick’s victims, ‘‘but I reckon it war he, for thar’s nothing 
like him in natur’.”” When the hero finally did catch a glimpse of 
the Jibbenainosay, he ‘‘beheld with surprise, perhaps even fora 
moment with the stronger feelings of awe, a figure stalking through 
the woods at a distance, looking as tall and gigantic in the growing 
twilight, as the equally collossal spectress seen on the wild summits 
of the Peruvian Andes,’ Chapter XI. After all this one is not quite 
prepared to learn that the Jibbenainosay is human, and a particularly 
humble sort of human, being a Quaker whose wife and children had 
been massacred by the Indians and who had devoted his life to the 
secret killing of Indians, though outwardly and whenever he appeared 
among white men, as much a Quaker as ever. 

A good deal of the natural lore, as well as the professed history, 
of the General History of Connecticut, by Samuel Peters, seems to 
be the product of the myth-making imagination. This history was 
first published in London in 1781, and an American edition, from 
which the citations here given have been taken, was published at 
New Haven in 1829. Apparently Peters was determined to be in- 
teresting, even to the extent of cracking credibility. He tells, 
p. 110, of a narrow place in the Connecticut river at which the water 


110 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


is so swift and dense that an iron crow-bar floats on top of it. He 
has a marvelous tale of an army of bullfrogs, p. 126, which appeared 
in the year 1758 in the town of Windham. The frogs “‘filled a road 
40 yards wide for four miles in length, and were for several hours in 
passing through the town.’ ‘This story is followed by a tale, p. 128, 
of an army of caterpillars which appeared in 1768, and which, after 
it had devoured every green thing for the space of a hundred miles, 
went down to the Connecticut River and drowned itself. In some 
instances the author’s inventive genius led him to the actual creation 
of animals. Such seems to be the whapperknocker. He is described, 
p. 189, as ‘‘somewhat bigger than a weazel, and of a beautiful brown- 
red color.”’ He lives in the woods on worms and birds, and is ‘‘so 
wild that no man can tame him; and, as he never quits his harbor in 
the daytime, is only to be taken by traps in the night.” Of the fur 
of the whapperknocker are made muffs, ‘‘at the price of thirty or 
forty guineas apiece.”’ The cuba, another of this historian’s rari- 
ties, the size of a large cat, is interesting mainly on the female side. 
The male is a good warrior, p. 190, but ‘‘his lady is peaceable and 
harmless, and depends for protection upon her spouse; and as he 
has more courage than prudence, always attends him to moderate 
his temper. She sees danger, and he fears it not. She chatters at 
him while he is preparing for battle; and if she thinks the danger is 
too great, she runs to him, and clings about his neck, screaming her 
extreme distress—bis wrath abates, and by her advice they fly to 
their caves.’”’ ‘‘When the male cuba is chained, and irritated into 
the greatest rage by an impertinent dog, his lady, who is never 
chained, will fly about his neck and kiss him, and in half a minute 
restore him to calmness.” 

Among the ‘“‘feathered tribe’? described by Peters as peculiar 
to America are mentioned together humilitys, whipperwills, and 
dewminks, p. 198. ‘‘The dewmink, so named from its articulating 
those syllables, is black and white, and of the size of an English 
robin. Its flesh is delicious.” ‘‘The humility is so called, because 
it speaks the word humility, and seldom mounts high in the air. 
Its legs are long enough to enable it to outrun a dog for a little way; 


VOCABULARY 111 


its wings long and narrow, body maiger, and of the size of a black- 
bird’s; plumage variegated with white, black, blue and red. It lives 
on tadpoles, spawn and worms; has an eye more piercing than the 
falcon, and the swiftness of the eagle. Hence it can never be shot: 
for it sees the sparks of fire even before they enkindle the powder, 
and, by the extreme rapidity of its flight, gets out of reach in an 
instant.”’ As the name of a bird humility, with a variant simplicity, 
is cited twice in the New English Dictionary in American use before 
the passage just quoted, once for 1634 and again for 1678. It is 
probable that the name of the bird in the description given by 
Peters and in the passage of 1678 was derived from the earliest oc- 
currence of it in the passage from 1634, but there is no further evi- 
dence that the word was used as a current name for a bird in New 
England. But if it was, certainly Peters did not describe the bird. 

The third of his talking birds Peters calls the whipperwill, or 
Whip-her-I-will. ‘This bird is also called the pope, ‘‘by reason of its 
darting with great swiftness, from the clouds to the ground, and 
bawling out Pope! which alarms young people and the fanatics very — 
much, especially as they know it to be an ominous bird.” It is also 
a weather prophet, always giving notice of an approaching storm. 
“Tf the tempest is to continue long, the augurs appear in flocks, and 
nothing can be heard but the word Pope! Pope!” Another marvel is 
the bull-fly, p. 195, ‘‘armed with a coat of mail, which it can move 
from one place to another, as sliders to a window are moved.” The 
glow-bug, p. 195, is better known as the lightning bug. Rattlesnakes, 
large enough ‘‘to gorge a common cat,” are called belled snakes 
because ‘‘before they bite, they rattle their bells three or four times.” 
The tree frog, p. 197, is described with some fancy and is said to sing 
the word I—sa—ac all the night. ‘‘It is from the singing of the tree 
frog that the Americans have acquired the name Little Isaac.’ 

This playful belief in impossible birds and beasts has left traces 
in American folklore. In that rustic and Juvenile practical joke, 
known as holding the bag, the animal which is to be driven into the 
bag is called an albotritch or some other outlandish and made up 
name. Another animal of the fancy is the prock, mentioned by 


112 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Thornton, ‘“‘which has two short legs on one side and two long on 
the other, to enable him to keep his perpendicular while browsing on 
the sides of steep mountains,’ Knickerbocker Magazine, X XXIII, 
363. This animal is also known as the stde-winder or side-hill 
badger, Dialect Notes, III, 249, from the peculiarity of his structure 
which permits him to feed only on a side hill. On the Texas range 
a pacing horse is called a side-winder. A side-hill gouger figures in 
popular Maine tradition, according to D. L. Sharpe, The Woods of 
Maine, Harper’s Monthly, July, 1922, p. 188. The side-hill gouger 
is an animal who captures those inexpert woodsmen who lose their 
sense of direction and go astray in the woods. ‘I do not know,” 
says Sharpe, ‘‘what sort of animal is Johnny’s side-hill gouger; though 
I saw, far up on the side of the mountain, a big bare spot where he 
had been digginge—according to the guide.” A variant bowger is 
recorded for Maine in Dialect Notes, V, 188. Here also are mentioned 
kickle snifters, who live in old men’s beards and in circular lakes; 
the kankagee, a word of undefined meaning from Maine; lucives, 
a kind of wild cat; the mountain rabbit and the philamaloo bird; the 
screboutl, a creature that steals chickens; the swamp gahoon, an ani- 
mal that makes snowshoe tracks; the swamp swiver; the treesqueak, 
an animal that makes a noise like trees rubbing together in the 
wind; the wampus cat, a creature heard whining about camps at 
night; the whiffenpuff, a strange animal that ranges at night. The 
word lucives in this list, also recorded as lucivee, is evidently a cor- 
ruption of Canadian French loup cervier. Popular tradition in some 
communities knows also of a joint snake, a snake which separates 
itself into numerous pieces when one attempts to catch it, assembling 
the pieces again when the danger is past. De Vere, Americanisms, 
p. 152, mentions a negro belief in a mythical animal called moonack, 
perhaps by some perversion of arctomys monaz, the Latin name for 
the groundhog. In connection with these mythical animals may 
be mentioned the phrase laros to catch meddlers, also sometimes lay 
ropes, lee ropes to catch medlarks, as in Charles Egbert Craddock, 
In the Clouds, p. 406, ‘‘But when asked what she was talking about, 
she would reply in enigmatic phrase, ‘Laros to ketch meddlers.’”’ 


VOCABULARY 113 


The origin and precise meaning of the phrase is not clear, though its 
obvious intent is to serve as a check to inquisitive curiosity. 

The plunkus, also called the ding-maul, Dialect Notes, III, 248, 
is described as not very large in body, but as having a tail about six 
feet long, at the end of which is ‘“‘a huge lump of bony gristle as large 
as an ordinary football.’’ This is the chief weapon of defence of the 
plunkus. 

Another creation of popular natural history is the hoop-snake, 
which puts its tail in its mouth and rolls incredibly fast, but which 
can be outrun if one will climb a fence, thereby causing the snake to 
unhoop before it can pass through. To the same region in the animal 
kingdom belongs the great giastaticus, a creature exceedingly large 
and exceedingly rare, but as to its other characteristics, exceedingly 
vague. This wonderful beast seems to have started with the name 
gyanousa, for which Thornton gives references for 1846, 1849 and 
1862. In the reference for 1849 the guyanosa appears in company 
with four young wolves, one prock, and a young Penobscot ice- 
breaker, the last not being more specifically described. ‘The name 
took also the form gyastacutus, and was applied to an instrument of 
noise used for charivaris. The whzfflepoof is another animal which 
figures in American unnatural natural history; the name is widely 
distributed in popular tradition, but the characteristics of the creature 
it names are vague and varied. The coach whip is a kind of snake 
which looks like a braided whip; probably its name has given rise to 
the popular belief that it winds itself around people’s legs and whips 
them to death with the end of its tail. The wunk is a strange animal 
that digs a hole and pulls the hole in after it. Hunting the wunk’s 
hole is a child’s adventure that may lead one far but in the nature 
of the thing is rarely successful. James Whitcomb Riley has a 
number of fictitious animals. There is of course the Gobble-uns of 
Little Orphant Annie, and in Dwainie, from The Flying Islands of 
the Night, ‘‘the lurloo ever sings,” ‘‘the winno-welvers call,’ the 
teeper twitters, the tcheucker teeters, and the drowsy oovers drawl, 


But Dwainie hides in Spirkland 
And answers not at all. 


114 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Somewhat similar in spirit to these humorous names of impos- 
sible animals are the joke words for impossible objects, a number 
of which have been collected by O. F. Emerson, Dialect Notes, V, 
93-97, under the heading Beguiling Words. Examples are black 
whitewash, a painter’s joke; striped ink, a printing office joke; com- 
pass key; leather faced hammer, a machinist’s joke; patent post 
hole; an italic period, a printer’s joke, etc. 

To these various popular fancies should be added the fictitious 
character Paul Bunyan, a Gargantuan backwoods hero. Every- 
thing relating to Paul Bunyan happens on a heroic scale. He combs 
his hair with a young pine tree. His feats of strength, his passions 
of rage are devastating. About him have gathered innumerable 
tales, a whole epic of the lumber camps, see Stevens, Paul Bunyan, 
New York, 1925, and Shephard, Paul Bunyan, Seattle, 1925. 


The sportive imagination illustrated by these names of fictitious 
animals and objects is a native characteristic of American English. 
This kind of humorous fancy is always one of the essential elements 
in slang, which arises only among persons in groups whose social 
intercourse is playful and is carried on with some vivacity. Life of 
this kind has been perhaps peculiarly possible in America, where 
rapidly changing external conditions and also changes in social 
grouping have kept the mind alert and eager to express first impres- 
sions. American slang is thus often directly expressive of concrete 
experience, and in consequence vigorously picturesque. Perhaps the 
most striking difference between British and American popular slang 
is that the former is more largely merely a matter of the use of queer 
sounding words, like bally or swank, whereas American slang sug- 
gests vivid images and pictures. 

The images which suggest slang are constantly changing, for 
nothing in language is so fugacious as slang. Consequently the slang 
phrase often completely disappears, or survives with only a weak- 
ened sense of its original picturesqueness. ‘Thus one may now use 
the metaphorical phrases to back and fill or to back water,, without 
thinking of the river steamboat in connection with which the phrases 


VOCABULARY 115 


arose. In some instances, as in to acknowledge the corn, no altogether 
satisfactory explanation of origins can be given. But one does not 
need antiquarian comment to perceive the meaning and the under- 
lying story in phrases like an Arkansas toothpick, meaning a dagger, 
to bark up the wrong tree, to make a bee line, a big bug, to cut across 
lots, the cap sheaf, to carry a chip on the shoulder, horse sense, to keep 
one’s eye peeled, to face the music, to get on the band wagon, to keep a 
stiff upper lip, to get the grand bounce, to get one’s walking papers, 
to settle one’s hash. This last phrase goes back to the eighteenth 
century, but apparently it became a part of familiar English only 
in the nineteenth century. The basis in fact upon which the meta- 
phor rests in this instance is not altogether apparent. A hash is 
usually a mixture of minced meat and other things, and perhaps the 
phrase, to settle the hash, arose when the hash, which was one of the 
important features in the bill of fare of the barbecue, boiled over. 
As it was made over an open fire in a large kettle, it would be likely 
to boil over and need settling. But direct evidence confirming this 
explanation is lacking. A place in Kentucky is known as Rabbit 
Hash. 

American facetious language is also rich in fantastically coined 
or combined words, as absquatulate, bodacious, perhaps made up 
from bold and audacious, but now rarely used, bogus, bummer, 
caboodle, cahoot, cantankerous, catawampus, cavort, cohogle, conniption 
fit, contraption, dude, highfalutin, hornswoggle, jigger, jigmaree, ram- 
bunchious, rumpus, savagerous, savigrous, skedaddle, skeezicks, slan- 
tandicular, sockdologer, splurge, spondulicks and many other words 
for money. 

If one may judge from the character and variety of names for 
‘“‘the undesirable citizen’’ which have been present in the language, 
one would say that he has been both numerous and amusing. He 
may have been merely a poor cuss, or, more picturesquely, a bummer, 
hobo, or yegg, a hoodlum, a jayhawker, a plug ugly, a ring tail 
roarer, a rowdy, a scalawag, a soap lock, a rough neck, an ugly cus- 
tomer who shoots up the town or paints the town red, though with 
all this variety of nomenclature he was doubtless much the same 


116 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


under whatever name he was known. Like all highly specialized 
trades, the business of thieving’ and swindling has developed a rich 
technical vocabulary, some of which, as in confidence man, gold 
brick, frame up, has come over into the general vocabulary, though 
in the main it has had only the limited circulation which the slang 
jargon of trade and technical vocabularies in general enjoy. The 
vocabulary of money is rich in facetious words, the exhilaration of 
having money putting one in a mood not to be satisfied by a literal 
name of the object. Thus the silver dollar became a cart wheel, or a 
plunk, and paper money a greenback, or a rag, see Paulding, Letters 
from the South, II, 122. The synonyms for money are infinite in 
number and fancy. Thornton, p. 971, quotes a set of verses in which 
the following occur: mopus, pewter, shiner, brad, dough, dollar, 
spoons, the bright and lively ready, the rowdy, the stumpy, the cash, 
the rhino, the tin, the dibs, the browns, the chips and dust and clink- 
ers, dimes, horse-nails, the brass, the needful, spondulix, buttons, 
rocks, mint-drops. 

The word specie now commonly means coin as contrasted with 
paper money, and in everyday use the word would be facetious. 
This meaning has been of gradual development, the stages of growth 
being well illustrated in the examples in the New English Dictionary. 
In the early town records occur many instances of the older meaning 
of the word, which is recorded in a variety of spellings, as merely 
kind or variety. In Plymouth Records, I, 143, the town agreed to 
see certain of its debts defrayed ‘‘in such specue as they shall agree 
with men for the doing it.’’ One-half of certain charges the town 
agrees, I, 164, are to be ‘‘payed in Currant silver Mony of New 
England and the other halfe in Corne and provisions. . . . The one 
halfe of both specaes to payed by the first of October.” Again the 
town decreed, I, 184, that ‘‘the Rates Both for Cuntrey and towne 
Charges should be made in one and the same speasey”’; and also, I, 
195, that ‘‘each person shall be payed both as to time and specey 
as Was Agreed on the last yeare.”’ 


1 For an early American list of thieves’ words, see The Life and Adventure of Henry 
Tufts, Dover, N. H., 1807, and T. W. Higginson, Science, V (1885), 380-382. 


VOCABULARY 117 


One form which the picturesque phrase sometimes took was that 
of abbreviation, as in O.K., which came in during the presidential 
campaign of 1828, and is commonly supposed to be from President 
Jackson’s spelling of all correct as oll korrect. Other abbreviations 
are G.O.P., P.D.Q., G.B., ‘‘the grand bounce,” the D.T.’s, etc., 
see also Long, Semi-Secret Abbreviations, Dialect Notes, IV, 245-— 
246. Many modern trade names are a kind of abbreviation, being 
words built up from initial letters, as in the Reo automobile, made 
by the R. E. Olds Company. Trade names in general in America 
offer a rich field for study, inasmuch as the necessity of finding 
distinctive and taking names for objects has led advertisers and 
manufacturers to perform the most surprising feats of ingenious, 
sometimes of grotesque inventiveness. In a few instances, as in 
kodak, victrola, these trade names remain as probably permanent 
additions to the vocabulary, but in most cases they satisfy their 
fleeting purpose if they attract a moment’s amused and interested 
attention, see Pound, Word-coinage and Modern Trade Names, 
Dialect Notes, IV, 29-41. 

The social diversions of youth are always exceptionally vivacious 
and one is therefore not surprised to find an extraordinarily rich 
development of slang in these circles. An older generation finds 
itself often quite shut off from the younger generation because it has 
not acquired the newer language. ‘This slang of social intercourse is 
as ephemeral as any other. Even its wit and picturesqueness rarely 
has virtue enough to save it. Who will know a generation hence 
that a snugglepup is a young man who attends petting parties, and 
that a petting party is a party devoted to hugging? Or that a crape- 
hanger is a reformer, or a lounge lizard one who suns himself eter- 
nally in good society, a cake eater being a harmless lounge lizard? 
A chaperone is a fire extinguisher, marriage is an eye-opener, dancing 
with a bashful partner is absent treatment. If there seems to be 
a vein of cynicism in this society cant, that also may be laid at the 
door of youth. 

In the general class of humorous words belongs the long list of 
intensives or swear words which for many generations have given 


118 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


a distinctive flavor to the more excited moods, sometimes to the 
casual conversation, of the American speaker. A distinction must 
be made between cursing and swearing. The former is a serious 
matter, and the forms of cursing are likely to be established by ven- 
erable and inalterable custom. Swearing satisfies a less solemn need 
for expression and gives room for the play of fancy and imagination. 
It may range from a mild intensive or colorless expletive to the 
limits at which, by taking the name of God in vain, cursing begins. 
The swear word or phrase may be merely ordinary English of a 
rich and satisfying rhythm. ‘‘By Golding’s bow key,” says Quick, 
Vandemark’s Folly, p. 304, the time and place being Iowa about 
1850, ‘‘was a very solemn objurgation. It could be used by pro- 
fessors of religion, but under great provocation only. It harks back 
to the time when every man who had oxen named them Buck and 
Golding, and the bow-key held the yoke on.” 

Many mild expletives are merely weakened forms of original 
curses, and in this kind of swearing the American, especially the 
Yankee, has been considered to be particularly adept. Phrases like 
I swan, I swow, I van, I vum, dad fetch it, to give a person Jesse, or 
particular Jesse, all fired, jo fired are quite safe though they still bear 
enough of the marks of their origin upon them to satisfy the needs 
of Puritan imprecation. The word eternal, in the form tarnal, and 
in the composite tarnation, also extended its usefulness, and tar- 
nation took on a contracted form nation which was formerly a neces- 
sary word in the stock in trade of any one who set about describing 
a rustic Yankee or telling a Yankee story. 

Another originally Yankee word was darn, which may be said to 
be now the universal American expletive, and which has had so dis- 
tinctive an American history that it must be examined in detail. 
The commonly accepted explanation of the word darn makes of it a 
euphemistic variant of damn. Thus the Century Dictionary speaks of 
darn as a ‘‘minced form of damn,” and the same explanation is found 
regularly in the dictionaries of slang as wel! as in the dictionaries of 
the standard speech. Darned and darnation or tarnation are taken 
to be variant forms of damned and damnation. The linguistic process 


VOCABULARY 119 


involved according to this explanation would be similar to that 
which has resulted in forms like gad, gee whiz, gosh, and various 
others. In present use there can be no question that darn and 
damn stand in intimate relation to each other. But there can also 
be no doubt that darn is historically of independent origin, that it is 
not a phonetic variant of damn, and that the contamination between 
the two words arose late and is one of meaning and not of form. 

There are considerable phonetic difficulties in the way of assum- 
ing that darn is merely a euphemistic variant of damn. Jespersen, 
Modern English Grammar, I, 301, who seems to be familiar only with 
the verbal uses of darn, regards the participle darned as the original 
and characteristic form of the word. He cites one example of darn 
as an imperative, but this, he says, ‘‘is the only instance I remember 
of seeing this r outside of the participle.’”’? Americans who examine 
their memories will find no difficulty in adding many more instances 
to Professor Jespersen’s single example, and will also readily recall 
adjective uses, as in It’s a darn shame, and adverbial, as in It’s too 
darn heavy. ‘The phonetic form of the participle Professor Jespersen 
thinks has no r in it, though he adds on the authority of Professor 
Hempl, ‘‘that some Americans here really pronounce an 7, in which 
case we may have one of those arbitrary sound substitutions that 
are so frequent in swearing.”’ Not only some Americans but most 
Americans who freely use the word pronounce an r, both in darned 
and darn. The arbitrary substitution of an r to differentiate darned 
from damned is an extremely unlikely supposition. Moreover one 
must then suppose that the n of darned is also an arbitrary substi- 
tution, since the n of both damned and damn is silent. The vowel 
also would have been changed from the [x] of damned to the [a] of 
darned, darn. And finally this phonetic explanation of darned, darn 
takes no account of the very significant and widespread variant pro- 
nunciation durned, durn. Granting the need of a euphemistic vari- 
ant for damned, damn, this word was scarcely bad enough as a swear 
word to occasion such thoroughgoing reconstruction as darn and 
durn imply. As a euphemistic variation of damned, domd or demd, 
both of which occur, would be more probable. 


120 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The right explanation of darn, durn, as verb, adjective and adverb, 
is that the word was originally a less highly colored element in the 
conventional vocabulary which later became corrupted through 
evil association with damn. The starting point is Old English 
dierne, common as an adjective but also present as adverb (cf. Beo- 
wulf, lines 150, 410), and as verb in the form diernan. The primary 
meaning of the adjective was ‘‘hidden,” “secret,” of the verb ‘“‘to 
conceal.’”’ But already in Old English the substantive passed out 
of its primary meaning into related meanings which may be charac- 
terized as at least shady in general. Old English dierne, diernan 
became regularly Middle English derne, dernen. As the verb oc- 
curred infrequently in Old English and Middle English, and appar- 
ently disappeared from literary use in early Modern English, it may 
be dropped out of consideration. The point of departure in the 
extension of the use of the word in Modern English was evidently 
the adjective and adverb, not the verb. Assuming for a moment 
the identity of Modern English darn, durn, and Middle English 
derne, one may point out that the phonetic development is just what 
one might expect. The forms are exactly parallel to such doublets 
in pronunciation as one finds in hearth, pronounced to rime with 
garth and girth, clerk, riming with mark or mirk; in parson, person; 
Hartford, Hertford; Barclay, Berkeley; and in popular pronunciations 
like sarvint for servant, larn for learn, and a great many others. Of 
the two forms darn and durn in Modern English, the former seems 
to be the more common. The reverse is true of the greater number of 
-er- words with double pronunciation, the spelling with -er- perhaps 
tending to limit the number of -ar- pronunciations. In so popular 
a word as darn, durn, however, the spelling could have had but little 
influence either way, and for this reason one is not surprised to find 
both forms persisting in popular pronunciation. 

The crucial point in this etymology of darn, durn, is obviously 
the change of meaning involved in the transition from a descriptive 
adjective or adverb to an imprecation. The general trend of the 
development which makes this supposition plausible is from a some- 
what precise meaning towards a more general one, a development 


VOCABULARY 121 


which ends in making the word an intensive of undifferentiated 
adverse significance, very much as words like awful, horrible, etc., 
have changed from specific to general intensive meanings. The 
process is already clearly indicated in Middle English, where derne 
occurs not only in its primary sense, but also in various secondary 
applications. Chaucer uses the word only three times, all in the 
Miller’s Tale and all with reference to illicit love. LLangland employs 
the word in the same connotation as Chaucer in the phrase “that 
deede derne,”’ A. Passus, X, 299, B. Passus, IX, 189, C. Passus, XI, 
295. But he speaks also of adultery, divorce, and ‘‘derne vsurye,”’ 
B. Passus, II, 175, where the sense seems not to be secret usury 
but merely wicked usury. Another passage in Langland deserves 
to be quoted: 
“‘For out of reson thei ryde and rechelesliche taken on, 


As in durne dedes bothe drynkynge and elles.”’ 
C. Passus. XIV, 154-155. 


Two passages occur in Richard the Redeless, Passus, I, 42, 69, in 
which Skeat seems to hesitate between the readings derwe and derne, 
but in the second at least, derne, meaning dreadful, wicked, seems 
necessary : 


“To deme youre dukys myssdedis_ so derne thei were.”’ 


Two further passages may be noted in the Bestiary. In one, Emer- 
son, Middle English Reader, p. 14, lines 16-17, the devil is said to be 
unable to discover how the lord appeared on earth, though he be 
‘‘derne hunte,’”’ though he be “‘a fierce hunter.’”’ In the other, p. 16, 
lines 13-14, man is said to be like the eagle, ‘‘Old in hise sinnes dern,’’ 
‘old in his dark or grievous sins,’’ before he becomes Christian. 
But it is unnecessary to multiply examples of what is a clearly defined 
development of the word in Middle English. 

In early Modern English the word appears not infrequently, 
both in its primary sense and in the generalized secondary senses. 
Levins, Manipulus (1576), defines dearne as dirus. The New English 
Dictionary cites an example from 1613 which reads, ‘‘Queene Eliza- 
beth died, a dearne day to England,” and another from 1650, “These 


122 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


derne, dreery, direful days.” Examples are given also of uses of 
the word as an intensive in the sense of merely deep, intense, as in 
‘“‘Unable to restrain his derne desire” (1594). In the quarto edition 
of Lear, III, 7, 63, a form of the word occurs, though the folio here 
reads stern, which is the reading usually followed by the editors. 
But the phrase as it stands in the quartos, ‘“‘that dearne time,’’ need 
not be regarded with suspicion, since it is apparent from the examples 
already quoted that the adjective dern was not uncommonly joined 
to general terms like time and day. The only other occurrence of 
the word in the text of Shakspere is in Pericles, III, I, 15, where it is 
combined with “painful” in the phrase ‘‘dern and painful perch.” 
The whole passage, presumably not by Shakspere, is consciously 
archaistic. In Spenser the word occurs only in the forms dernly and 
dernful, e.g., Mourning Muse, line 90, ‘‘dernfull noise,” made by 
birds of ‘‘ill presage”; Daphnaida, 196, “‘thus dearnlie plained,’’ 
thus grievously lamented; Fairy Queen, II, I, 35, 7, ‘“‘a ruefull voice 
that dearnly cride’’; also III, I, 14, 4, ‘‘Their puissaunce whylome 
full dernly tryde,’’ very severely tried; and III, XII, 34, 4, ‘‘Dernly 
unto her called,” earnestly unto her called. Its comparatively rare 
occurrence, however, and the character of the passages in which it is 
used, show that the word had already become more or less archaic 
by the beginning of the seventeenth century. After that it seems 
to have fallen almost completely out of literary use, and to have been 
restored to knowledge again only in modern times through the study 
of English rustic dialects. Wright, English Dialect Dictionary, finds 
the word widely distributed in modern English dialects, in meanings 
ranging from secret, obscure, through dark, dreary, lonely, hard, 
stern, determined, eager, earnest, careful, and even as applied to 
weather, raw, cold and generally disagreeable. Among a ‘List of 
words for the present kept back from the want of further informa- 
tion,” Vol. I, p. v, he notes dern, as adjective or adverb in Scotland 
in the sense of daring, fierce, wild. If the examples and definitions 
which have been cited have shown, as they were intended to do, 
that dern developed into an intensive of broad general significance 
of an adverse kind, it is apparent that the word could be used in 


VOCABULARY 128 


passages which would require a great variety of synonymous or 
approximately synonymous words, to express explicitly the senses 
intended. 

It remains now to bridge the chasm between the use of dern as 
an intensive of general condemnatory significance and its use as an 
imprecation. No one familiar with the histories of popular words 
like oaths will expect to put his finger on the precise time and place 
when the change occurred. Evidence in such cases must be largely 
cumulative, though in this instance it seems that the conclusion 
can be placed beyond reasonable doubt. In the first place it should 
be noted that damn as a verb used profanely occurs early. The New 
English Dictionary records an instance as early as 14381, with others 
that follow consecutively. The participial adjective damned is re- 
corded for 1596 and after. The first recorded instance of damn as 
a noun is for 1619, and of course later ones all along. But when we 
come to darn, darnation, we find the first instance in the New English 
Dictionary for 1837-40, in Haliburton’s New England dialect sketches. 
This date may be carried back a few years, since the sketches ap- 
peared in journalistic form before they were published as a book. 
The New English Dictionary describes the word as occurring chiefly 
in the United States. The Century and the Standard have nothing 
to add to the New English Dictionary. Wright, English Dialect 
Dictionary, records the word as widely current in English and Ameri- 
can use, but only very recent examples are given. When Dickens 
made his travels in America in 1842 he apparently met with the word 
for the first time when he heard an American say ‘‘darn my mother,” 
American Notes (London, 1900), p. 150. Dickens did not connect 
the word with damn at all, as he remarks that he does not know 
‘‘what the sensation of being darned may be, or whether a man’s 
mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the process than anybody 
else.’ Dickens remembered the word, and in the first chapter of 
Martin Chuzzlewit in which Americans appear, Chapter XVI, he 
put it into the mouth of one of his American characters. Now if 
Dickens, familiar as he was with the popular life and language of 
his own country, had never heard darn in England, it is a pretty 


124 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


safe assumption that it was not there to be heard. Haliburton’s use 
of it, however, establishes the word as current in New England by 
the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The most reasonable 
hypothesis seems to be that darn, darned, darnation and tarnation, 
as imprecations, are all of New England Puritan origin. All the 
early examples are localized in New England. Wherever the impre- 
cation occurs in early Southern American English, it is always re- 
corded as an outright damn.’ In New England, however, one 
might expect the Puritan tradition against swearing to be sufficiently 
active to lead to the modification of swear words as a compromise, 
though certainly not strong enough to prevent their use. 

As a further link in the argument for the New England origin of 
darn, one must note the important evidence of the survival of the 
older use of darn as a more or less colorless intensive in common 
New England usage. In one of the notes to his Dissertations (1789), 
p. 385, Noah Webster comments on the word, spelling it dern, and 
says that it “‘is in common use in New England and is pronounced 
darn.’ Webster was not often happy in his etymologies, but in this 
instance he correctly guessed the Middle English origin of the word. 
He adds, however, that the word does not have ‘‘the sense it had 
formerly; it is now used as an adverb to qualify an adjective, as darn 
sweet, denoting a great degree of the quality.’”’ Webster remarks 
further that for many years he ‘“‘had supposed the word dern in the 
sense of great or severe was local in New England,” and that “‘per- 
haps it may not now be used anywhere else.’”?’ Apparently darn as 
imprecation was unknown to Webster, or else he would certainly 
have said something about it. But he did not record dern or darn 


1A passage in Beveridge’s Life of John Marshall, III, 205, illustrates the differ- 
ence between New England and the South in the use of this word. The passage 
occurs in an account of the trial of Samuel Chase for impeachment before the Senate 
in February, 1805. Chase was charged with having used the word damned at an 
inappropriate moment, and in answer to this charge Luther Martin, attorney for 
Chase, replied as follows: ‘‘However it may sound elsewhere in the United States, 
I cannot apprehend it will be considered very offensive, even from the mouth of a judge 
on this side of the Susquehanna;—to the southward of that river it is in familiar use 
. . supplying frequently the place of the word very . . . connected with subjects 
the most pleasing; thus we say indiscriminately a very good or a damned good bottle 
of wine, a damned good dinner, or a damned clever fellow.”’ 


VOCABULARY 125 


in his dictionaries, probably regarding it as so distinctly a popular 
word as not to be deserving of dictionary record. 

Some of the early American examples are interesting as showing 
the word in transition stages. Macintosh, Hssaz Raisonné (1797), 
p. 45, gives the word in two spellings, dearn, darn, and he seems to 
have regarded it as an ordinary conventional word. As a stronger 
intensive it already appears in Jonathan Postfree (1806), an American 
farce by L. Beach, in which the Yankee Jonathan says, ‘“‘Came down 
[to New York from Connecticut] by land—drove down old Squire 
Herdy’s cattle—darn’d ugly creatures to drive—almost pestered my 
heart out.” In J. N. Barker’s Tears and Smiles (1808), Nathan 
Yank speaks, Act I, ‘‘I’ll be darned, sir, if I think this is the way, 
for I can’t see a morsel of a church.” In the preface to this play, 
the author speaks not impolitely but kindly of his ‘‘d——d good- 
natured friend.’ In Love and Friendship (1809), a comedy by 
A. B. Lindsley, a Yankee servant Jonathan says, ‘‘darn my skin ’f 
you wouldn’t dewe it, clear as mud.’’ In Woodworth’s Deed of Gift 
(1822), p. 20, Dan’l, a Massachusetts village rustic, says to his 
mother, ‘“‘But, darn it, mother, I don’t want to get off,’’ and to the 
maiden he is courting, p. 45, ‘“‘I have taken a liking to you, ’cause 
you are so darn’d pretty.’”’ But the word could be used also as a 
much milder intensive. In Kendall’s Doleful Tragedy of the Raising 
of Jo. Burnham (1832), Aunt Debby, an innocent New England 
dame, sitting by the fireside knitting, speaks of the night meetings 
of the Masons, Act II, Scene I, who ‘‘keep so darn’d sly about it.” 
There was surely no off color in this use of the word, for when the 
swear word is used in this play, as it frequently is by men, the author 
writes it d——d. A similar use is that in Haverhill, by James A. 
Jones (1831), p. 253. This is a romance of the years just before the 
Revolution, in which there is a good deal of realistic description of 
New England. Aminidab, a rustic New Englander, speaks as New 
Englandly as the author can make him: ‘‘A tarnation big ship, too, 
and owned by Elder Pollard, he that built the block of housen where 
Elder Hillyard has his darned great bookstore, and owns that unim- 
proved tract of brush on the road to Hingham.” An earlier occur- 


126 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


rence of tarnation is in Lambert’s Travels in the years 1806, 1807 and 
1808, Vol. II, p. 506, and Lambert also gives nation as a New England 
word, but he never puts darn, darnation, tarnation or nation in the 
mouth of a Southern speaker. 

In J. Robinson’s Yorker’s Stratagem, New York, 1792, Act I, Sc. 
I, the phonetic variant form dur occurs. ‘‘T’ll not put up with any 
of your half laughs,’’ says Amant, who is ‘‘dressed like a Yankey 
clown” and tries to speak like one, ‘‘T’ll be dur if I do, and that’s 
point blank.”’ The forms tarnashon and tarnish also occur in this 
play. 

It should be noted that darn as an intensive has grown stronger 
with use. This is not the common fate, however, of intensives, which 
ordinarily by familiarity become weakened and must be replaced 
by fresher and stronger terms. If darn had become generalized in 
use as it was at first employed in New England and without associa- 
tion with damn, which in turn derived its strength by being frequently 
combined with the name of the Deity, it would probably long since 
have become as colorless as awful, horrible, dreadful and other similar 
commonplace intensive words. But when darn came to be regarded 
as a substitute for damn, it borrowed some of the powers of the 
latter word, though it never became its equal in intensive value. 

In brief then the explanation of darn, darned is that the word 
was originally Old English dzerne, which developed as an intensive 
adjective and adverb. Asan adjective darn readily took on the form 
of a participial adjective, just as addle, originally an adjective, be- 
came also addled, a participial adjective. From addled a finite verb 
was then formed, as in ‘‘to addle one’s head over accounts.” So 
also from darned a verb darn was derived. As the New England 
social conscience was tender on this point of swearing, it was the 
most natural thing in the world for the New Englander to secure 
the necessary relief which an imprecation affords by substituting the 
already familiar and inoffensive darn for the bolder but unequivocally 
profane word of the vocabulary. 

Another American intensive which calls for explanation is the 
phrase torn down. It occurs several times in Lindsley’s Love and 


VOCABULARY 127 


Friendship (1809), as at p. 10, ‘‘Darnation! says ’e, in a torne down 
passion”’; also on p. 57, “‘for we’ve put things all t’ rights aboard 
in a torne down fine order,” and again, ‘“‘our capun . . . hopes you'll 
have a torne down agreeable night on ’t.”” In Kennedy’s Swallow 
Barn, p. 41, written about 1830, occurs the sentence, ‘‘ His whole air 
is that of an untrimmed colt, torn down and disorderly.” The word 
is recorded in present use, Dialect Notes, II, 334, for southwestern 
Missouri, the example cited being, ‘‘He is a torn-down fellow when 
he is drinking and everybody is afraid of him.”’ The New English 
Dictionary gives this word as dialectal in England and as occurring in 
the United States, and takes it to be merely torn with the preposition 
down, comparing torn off, torn up, etc. The developments in mean- 
ing involved in this explanation are not clear, but the explanation 
may be correct. A not dissimilar use is that of tear, noun, as in ‘“‘to 
go on a tear,” or tearing, as in “‘to have a tearing time.” A variant 
form of the phrase is employed by Charles Egbert Craddock, Despot 
of Broomsedge Cove, p, 140, in Tennessee mountain dialect: ‘‘ Racin’ 
an’ bettin’ air sinful,’ she declared, ‘‘an’ that thar tearin’-down, 
good-lookin’ Teck Jepson hev got mighty little religion ef he don’t 
know it.””. Wright, English Dialect Dictionary, records torn down as 
current in the dialect speech of Scotland, Lancashire and Lincolnshire. 

Another unexplained word is jzffy. It occurs in Kendall’s Doleful 
Tragedy (1832), p. 23, in the form giffin, “cut his throat in a giffin.”’ 
In Carlton’s New Purchase, p. 38, the word is spelled as one would 
now expect it to be spelled—‘‘ we shall be off in what they call a jiffy— 
1.e.,1na moment or two.” The New English Dictionary has examples 
of jiffy beginning the latter part of the eighteenth century, and in 
the English Dialect Dictionary, both uff and jiffy are recorded. No 
evidence, however, is available for the etymology of the word, and 
the form gzffin is not listed. 

Another expletive which occurs in two forms in Kendall and 
Carlton is the word hooter, hait. Kendall, p. 81, has “can’t do a 
hooter,” i.e., can do nothing. Carlton, p. 147, writes “‘they never 
did us harm—no, not a hait—(little bit).”’ Thornton gives examples 
of hooter down to 1862. That these two words are the same in origin 


128 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


is probable but not proved. The New English Dictionary under 
hate, haet, explains this word as from “Devil have it,’ in Scotch, 
“‘Deil hae’t,” in meaning equivalent to devil a bit. ‘‘Hence haet, 
with an ordinary negative, as not a haet, came sometimes to be under- 
stood as equivalent to ‘whit,’ ‘atom,’ or ‘anything, the smallest 
thing that can be conceived’ (Jamieson).” The Dictionary gives 
examples of haet from 1590 on, but does not record hooter in this 
sense. For the etymology given above a Scotch verdict of not 
proven must be rendered. In Dialect Notes, I, 389, ‘“‘didn’t get a 
hate,” meaning “didn’t get a thing” is recorded for Pennsylvania, 
Kentucky and Eastern Ohio. 

Many other varieties of intensives are found on the more familiar 
levels of American speech. Universals and superlatives have often 
acauired intensive value, as in “‘like all creation,” ‘‘all nature,” “‘all 
wrath,” ‘‘all possessed,” indicating merely a high degree of the action 
expressed by a preceding verb, and powerful, monstrous, universal, 
beatingest have also acquired a similar generalized superlative 
meaning. The following sentence from Longstreet, Georgia Scenes, 
p. 22, ‘‘He’s the best piece of hoss flesh in the thirteen united uni- 
versal worlds,’ would seem really to have attained the superlative of 
eminence. Another American intensive is the word tall, as in tall 
talk, tall swearing, tall shooting, etc. This was good Elizabethan 
English, as in Sir Toby’s remark, Twelfth Night, I, III, 18, ‘‘He’s as 
tall a man as any’s in Illyria.”” The word seems to have had a some- 
what facetious color in Shakspere, and this it has retained in Ameri- 
can speech. The use of rzght as an intensive, as in ‘“‘right glad,” 
is more characteristically Southern than general American use at 
present, and it is described in the New English Dictionary as archaic 
in England. In adverbial phrases like “right out,” ‘“‘right off,” 
“right away,” the use is general, and it is also recorded for England 
by the New English Dictionary, with the comment that it originated 
in America. But the proof of the correctness of this latter state- 
ment is lacking. 

Emphasis by understatement is also not uncommon in American 
familiar speech, as when a person is said to be a caution or a case, 


VOCABULARY 129 


or an action or object which is truly big is said not to be a 
circumstance to something else. The word ordinary in a colloquial 
form ornery has acquired general value as a strong term of dis- 
approval. The word common has also tended to go the same way, 
but perhaps it is characteristic of the leveling forces in democracy 
that the word has also acquired in popular speech commendatory 
senses. 

Picturesque and metaphorical intensives abound in the language, 
as in the negatives ‘“‘not by a jugful,” ‘“‘not by a long sight,” ‘‘no 
two ways about it,” or when a person is said to be ‘‘some pumpkins,”’ 
or the reverse, ‘‘small potatoes—and few in a hill.’” American popu- 
lar speech especially is likely to be colored by striking but homely 
similes of this kind, as in ‘‘slow as molasses in January,” “‘quick as 
greased lightning,” ‘‘keen as a Philadelphia lawyer,” ‘‘ peanut pol- 
itics.”” The earliest example of the hyperbolical phrase ‘‘to knock 
one into a cocked. hat”’ in Thornton is for 1833, but as cocked hats 
had gone out of use by that time, the locution must have originated 
earlier. This rustic figurative style goes back to the beginning of 
the realization of a distinctive American Yankee language. It is 
ridiculed in the Portfolio, March 12, 1803, Vol. 3, No. 1, in the 
following verses and their introductory comment: 

‘Ever since the era of Dr. Franklin, the love of proverbs has 
waxed exceedingly fervent, among our countrymen. This debase- 
ment of the dignity and elegance of diction is not less justly than 
humorously ridiculed, by a Yankee bard [not named], who thus jeers 
the woeful insipidity of the simple style. 


YANKEE PHRASES 


As sound as a nut o’er the plain 

I of late whistled, chock full of glee: 
A stranger to sorrow and pain, 

As happy as happy could be. 


As plump as a partridge I grew, 

My heart being lighter than cork: 
My slumbers were calmer than dew! 
My body was fatter than pork! 


130 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Thus happy I hop’d I should pass 

Sleek as grease down the current of time, 
But pleasures are brittle as glass, 
Although, as a fiddle they’re fine. 


Jemima, the pride of the vale, 

Like a top, nimbly danced o’er our plains: 
With envy the lasses were pale— 

With wonder stood gaping the swains. 


She smiled like a basket of chips— 
As tall as a hay pole her size— 
As sweet as molasses her lips— 
As bright as a button her eyes. 


Admiring I gazed on each charm, 

My peace that would trouble so soon, 
And thought not of danger, nor harm, 
Any more than the man in the moon. 


But now to my sorrow I find 

Her heart is as hard as a brick: 
To my passion forever unkind, 
Though of love I am full as a tick. 


I sought her affection to win, 

In hopes of obtaining relief, 

Till I, like a hatchet, grew thin, 
And she, like a haddock, grew deaf. 


I late was as fat as a doe 

And playful and spry as a cat: 
But now I am dull as a hoe, 
And lean and as weak as a rat. 


Unless the unpitying fates 

With passion as ardent shall cram her, 
As certain as death or as rates, 

I soon shall be dead as a hammer. 


This poem was probably copied in the Portfolio from the Federal 
Orrery, where it appeared on May 11, 1795, Vol. 2, p. 230, under 
the title Cant Phrases, and signed Kadanda. A considerable fashion 
in the writing of such poems existed at the time. 


VOCABULARY 131 


Certain practical activities necessarily called for extensions of 
the English vocabulary in America. The Yankees being much 
given to bargain and exchange have accordingly enriched the vocab- 
ulary of the language in this direction. The verb to trade, amply 
illustrated in Thornton, has always had in it certain sporting impli- 
cations which have saved it from degenerating into the same class 
as British tradesman or the phrase in trade. Another universal 
Americanism of the same kind is the word swap, for which the earli- 
est American reference in Thornton is for 1782. It was current 
earlier, as we learn from Suffield Records, p. 308 (1748), the towns- 
men having voted ‘‘that the Sellect Men in the Spring by a good 
cow and Let Jeam Leraby have, to help him maintaine his child; 
and att ye fall of y® year if y® child Lives the Sellect men with Jeams 
swop the cow, or Do that thay shall think Best.’”’ Though ap- 
parently not originally facetious, the word later took on somewhat 
humorous color. It was included by Dr. Johnson in his dictionary, 
though it was there characterized as ‘‘a low word.’”’ This probably 
means nothing more, however, than that the word was known to 
Johnson only in provincial or local use. 

Though not limited to American practice, the word peddle has 
taken on distinctively American significances from the earlier activi- 
ties of the Yankee pedlar of Yankee notions. A notion store is still 
a small establishment where pins, needles, tape and a variety of 
similar articles are sold. Since the Yankee pedlar has passed out 
of existence the word has again tended to degenerate and to be 
applied to a poor creature with a pack on his back. In New Eng- 
land, however, the verb peddle still survives in the colorless meaning 
to sell at retail, especially to the selling of milk or meat or other 
household necessities from a wagon. 

The American use of store is fully illustrated by Thornton’s quo- 
tations. The earlier American word was shop, as now in England, 
and Thornton’s first example of store is for 1773, where store and 
shop are used together as synonyms. Gradually store supplanted 
shop, until now in ordinary American use store means any place of 
some size where things are sold, and shop commonly means a smaller 


132 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


place where things are done or made. Thus one would speak of a 
shoe store, where shoes are sold, but of a shoe shop, where shoes are 
mended, of a barber shop, a blacksmith shop, a machine shop, but 
of a drygoods store, a grocery store, a furniture store, etc. The dis- 
tinctions are not always clearly maintained, however, as in some 
communities one speaks of the butcher shop, the meat shop, the bake 
shop, and perhaps of other shops, in which the notion of doing some- 
thing or making something is not strikingly prominent. And on 
the other hand the word shop has been extended to apply to factories 
in which things are made on a large scale, corresponding to the 
British use of works. Through British influence the use of shop 
for store has been extended here and there in self-conscious urban 
use, as In boot shop, book shop for the more customary shoe store, 
book store. In older American use the distinction between things 
bought at the store and things made at home gave rise to various 
locutions like store clothes, store cloth, store tea, store cheese, store- 
keeper. The terms storekeeper, to keep store were ordinarily used in 
older American communities in connection with the general store 
which supplied the community with all it wanted, wet goods, dry 
goods and hardware. A merchant was one who bought and sold on a 
larger scale, or when the dry goods part of selling became detached 
and specialized, the person who was called a draper in England came 
to be called a merchant in America, perhaps through the influence of 
merchant taylor or perhaps because the merchant dealt not in homely 
local produce, pork and flour and such other products as the farmer 
raised on his land, but in silks and satins and cloths from afar and 
thus became a more dignified person. Some tailors or taylors still 
describe themselves as merchant tailors. The earliest occurrence of 
dry goods in Thornton is for 1777, and early British travelers in Amer- 
ica frequently noticed this use of the word as unfamiliar to them. 
Fearon, Sketches of America (1817), p. 10, remarked that the “linen 
and woolen drapers (dry goods stores, as they are denominated) 
leave quantities of their goods loose on boxes,’’ and whenever he 
had occasion to use the word, Fearon always put it within quotation 
marks. 


VOCABULARY 133 


The word lumber, combined also with other words, as in lumber- 
man, lumber merchant, has had a distinctive development in Amer- 
ica. The starting place is the general sense of the word meaning 
a variety of discarded furniture, utensils, etc., as in Huntington 
Records (1686), p. 435, ‘‘a loume and weavers geer and other lum- 
ber.” In the Southold Records (1658), I, 488, we read of “Iron, 
Cotton wool, a new beadtick, old caske, comes [combs], old sales, a 
malt mill and other lumber in the chambers.”’ Sundries are grouped 
in this list under the heading “lumber omitted,” p. 489. An equiva- 
lent term is found in the inventory of another estate in the same 
records, I, 443 (1658), where miscellaneous articles are described as 
‘pewter, brasse, and other trumpery,”’ words to make one’s mouth 
water if one were a collector of antiques. But the word early came 
to be used in a more definite sense in the Colonies, and a surveyor of 
lumber was regularly appointed in the New England towns. In 
Plymouth Records II, 45 (1710), we read that ‘‘Sergant harlow and 
Jacob Mitchel are chosen to survey all sorts of lumber exposed to 
sale’”’; and elsewhere mention is made of ‘“‘bords Timber and Lum- 
ber,” II, 103 (1714), and of ‘‘Timber bords planks shingle and any 
other lumber,” II, 202 (1720). In these quotations it is evident 
that the earlier meaning of lumber as signifying a variety of objects 
is still present, though the elements are also present which might 
lead to a narrowing of the content of the word. The line of transition 
is indicated by a remark of Cooper, in his Notions of the Americans 
(1828), I, 248, defining the word lumber men, which he had used in his 
text, as meaning those ‘‘who fell trees, and convert them into vari- 
ous objects of use, such as staves, shingles, etc.’’ This is exactly 
what the early American woodsman did; he went into the woods, 
either alone or with one or two others, and having cut down his 
trees, he made them into shingles, staves, clapboards and other such 
“lumber.”’ With the later arrival of the sawmill and the expansion 
of the business of converting trees into boards, the term lumber 
took on its now more generally current meaning of boards sawed 
and ready for building. Like other occupations, the business of 
lumbering has developed a highly technical vocabulary of its own. 


134 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The tree cut down and ready for the mill is a log, standing trees are 
timber, sawed beams for the framework of buildings are timbers. 
To take to the tall timber is a picturesque metaphor which explains 
itself as meaning to withdraw to a safe and secluded distance. 


In the process of occupying the land, various new topographical 
terms acquired currency in American use, some becoming general, 
but many also establishing themselves only in the regions in which 
their use was a practical convenience or necessity. Among these 
may be mentioned barrens, bayou, savannah in the South, bench or 
mesa, butte, chute, bluff, knob, in western regions. The use of the 
word prairie became general in the early nineteenth century, with 
the beginning of the movement of the population westward. It 
took on various popular spellings and pronunciations, often becom- 
ing a trisyllable, as in prararee, Carlton, New Purchase, p. 135. The 
licks in various regions, to which deer and other animals resorted, 
have also made some characteristic additions to the American vocab- 
ulary. An opening or oak opening, utilized by Cooper in the title 
of one of his novels, was a natural park-like formation in the forest 
for which, the forests themselves having largely disappeared, a term 
is no longer needed. A new usage in the Far West is the application 
of the word park to those delightful meadowy valleys with trees scat- 
tered here and there which are found throughout the Rockies. Less 
agreeable are the sinks, sink holes, sloughs, slews and swales which 
occur in the level country. The aptly descriptive term rolling land 
is one which could have originated only where extensive stretches of 
territory appeared at a glance to the eye of the observer. 

Not uninteresting are certain topographical terms which have 
acquired American flavor, though merely by custom and not be- 
cause the words in themselves are unusual. Thus we speak of 
down East and down South, or up North and out West, and of the Far 
West and of the Middle West, though there is no Near West between 
which and the Far West the Middle West stands. The dividing 
line between the East and West is often made, however, when one 
speaks of west of the Alleghanies. The relativity of all geographical 


VOCABULARY 135 


situations is well illustrated by the fact that though in the East one 
speaks of out West, on the Coast one frequently hears out East, 
though also often back East, perhaps with fond recollections of an 
old home. The Eastern Shore, a land if not of milk and honey at 
least of ducks and oysters, has become specifically the eastern shore 
of Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay. One speaks also of tidewater 
Virginia, meaning those lower sections of eastern Virginia reached 
by the James, Rappahannock and other tidal rivers, and also of 
regions further inland with the qualifying adjective freshwater, as 
in freshwater towns or freshwater colleges, the adjective carrying with 
it some implication of rusticity and provincialism. The higher and 
western regions of Virginia are known as Piedmont Virginia. ‘The 
Gulf States are obviously those that touch the Gulf of Mexico. The 
Coast now commonly means the Pacific coast, especially California, 
but when one goes to the beach on the Atlantic side of the continent 
one speaks of the Shore. 


The transportation system of a new country is almost certain 
to call for inventive modification of older traditional methods of 
locomotion, and thus for new terms in the vocabulary. In the first 
half of the nineteenth century when long distance traveling inland 
was done largely by water along the river courses, many new words 
or adaptations of words came into use, especially names of kinds 
of boats, such as flat, flat boat, periogue, pirogue, keel boat, Kentucky 
boat, ark, batteau, broad-horn, and a whole vocabulary of river travel 
which leads one back to a vanished but romantically interesting 
period of American history. Some of the words familiarized by 
river navigation have remained. Thus the noun cut off, meaning 
a way that shortens the distance between two points, first came 
into common use on the Mississippi, where a new and shorter chan- 
nel sometimes makes itself at times of high water between two 
points on the main river. From the river it was extended to the 
railroad, any shortening of the line being called a cut off. Floating 
logs and trees in the channel of the river brought into use the terms 
planter, sawyer, and snag, but only the last of these three words 


136 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


appears to be a permanent addition to the American vocabulary. 
Their differences are described by Carlton, New Purchase, p. 48, as 
follows: ‘‘A planter is the trunk of a tree, perpendicular or inclined, 
with one end fixed or planted immoveable in the bottom of the river, 
and the other above or below the surface according to the state of 
the water. A snag is a miniature or youthful planter. ...A 
sawyer is either a long trunk, or more commonly an entire tree, so 
fixed that its top plays up and down with the current and the wind.” 

The word patron as a nautical term, for which early citations 
will be found in the New English Dictionary, lingered in America in 
the sense of captain or steersman of a river boat, as in Brackenridge, 
Journal, p. 206, note, ‘‘The patron is the fresh water sailing 
master.’ This and other examples as late as 1850 will be found 
in Thornton. 

With the application of steam to river navigation, both the 
character of river boats and those who ran them underwent a change. 
The romance of the river has now become a thing of the past, though 
not altogether unrecoverable in Hay’s Jim Bludsoe and Mark Twain’s 
Infe on the Mississippi, and assuredly not lost in popular tradition 
and song. The steamboat still fills a large place in American boyish 
imagination, and though not what it used to be, wherever there is 
a river or lake large enough to float a steamboat, it still comes round 
the bend, still puffs black clouds from its smokestack, still whistles 
its invitation to holiday adventurers. According to the United 
States Official Postal Guide, three places in the United States have 
taken their name from the steamboat, one in Nevada, one in Colo- 
rado, and one in Jowa. 

Characteristic parts of the American river and lake boats are the 
pilot house and the hurricane deck, and two others, texas and stateroom, 
are explained in the following words of an old river-boat man, given 
by Abdy, On the Ohio (1919), p. 246: 

“You see, in the early days o’ steam-boatin’ all the cabins was 
named after States—that’s where the name ‘state-room’ comes 
from, see? Well, there was a bright young feller in the Mississippi 
country who had designed some right speedy boats, so when he got 


VOCABULARY 137 


a contract to build an extra smart and fancy packet—the ‘Kate 
Barnsdale’ was her namc—he tried somethin’ new. It was a little 
deck-house just behind the pilot—the idea being to provide more 
sleeping room for passengers. Well, he didn’t know what to name 
the new contraption; but it so happened that the boat went into 
commission on the very day that the State of Texas was admitted 
into the Union; so the new cabin was named the ‘texas.’” It has 
seemed worth while quoting this passage giving the origin of state- 
room as used on American river-boats because it sounds so plau- 
sible, and yet is so probably not true. The explanation evidently 
grew from the name, and evidence that staterooms “in the early 
days o’ steam-boatin’’’ were named after states is lacking. On the 
other hand, we find that stateroom, defined as “‘a captain’s or supe- 
rior officer’s room on board ship,” is recorded in the New English 
Dictionary for 1660, 1694, and at other times before any one ever 
dreamed of steamboats on American rivers. The American use 
seems merely to be an extension of the older use, and if there is any- 
thing American about it, perhaps it lies merely in the grandiloquent 
application of the term stateroom to all the cabins on a boat. That 
the texas took its name, however, from the State of Texas seems 
probable, and the details of the explanation given above may be 
correct. But as Texas was a lone star state, may not the texas 
have been thought of as a lone stateroom cabin? 

It is not altogether clear whether the word line was first used of 
ships or of railways. Cooper, Notzons, I, 293 (1828), speaks of ‘‘the 
steamboat lines, as they are called,’ and his words imply that this 
was a new usage. It is not probable that the newness consisted, 
however, in the transference of the word from railways to steam- 
boats, for the railways at the time Cooper wrote were as new as 
the steamboats. The new use of the word apparently lay in the 
extension of it from the older notion of a succession, as in a line of 
kings, etc., to name a succession of steamboats arriving and depart- 
ing at stated times. The first example of this use in the New English 
Dictionary is for 1848, twenty years later than the passage quoted 
from Cooper. The first example of line as applied to railways is for 


138 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


1825. If the use originated in connection with railways, one may 
think of the parallel extended tracks as lines, or perhaps one may 
suppose that the term originated in the surveyor’s line which was 
always run before the tracks could be laid. But it is possible that 
the word was first transferred from ocean to railway service, and the 
many uses of line in nautical senses, e.g., ships of the line, the lines 
of a ship, line meaning cord or rope, and various others defined in 
the New English Dictionary, support this conclusion. After the 
transference was made, meanings like those mentioned above at- 
tached themselves to the word in connection with the railways. 
In the history of very familiar words like this, evidence is frequently 
not available which would enable one to follow step by step the 
stages of development. 

The vocabulary of railroading in America is in many respects 
characteristic of local usage. The differences between British and 
American railroad terminology have been frequently pointed out,! 
and a partial explanation offered to the effect that in England the 
railroads, when they were new, utilized coaching terms, such as 
coach, driver, guard, booking-office, whereas in America the vocabu- 
lary of steamboating was the familiar existent resource of the lan- 
guage which was transferred to the railroads. This would account 
for the American all aboard as a warning of departure, for berth as 
the name of the sleeping accommodation in a Pullman, and for state- 
room as the name for a private room on a Pullman. The caboose 
on a freight train took its name from the older caboose on the deck 
of a ship. But manifestly it is easier to think of railroading terms 
which did not owe their origin to steamboating than to think of 
those that did. In most instances no simple principle appears, 
except the accident of convention, when the vocabulary of the 
American railroad is different from that of the British, as in Ameri- 
can conductor, British guard, American brakeman or trainman, British 
brakesman, American freight train, British goods train, American 


1See Matthews, Parts of Speech, pp. 114-115; Greenough and Kittredge, Words 
and their Ways, p. 271. For a list of American railroad terms, see Dialect Notes, 
IV, 335-357. 


VOCABULARY 139 


depot, largely giving way now to station, British terminus, American 
baggage, baggage car, British luggage, luggage van. 

In some instances certain aspects of the American railway which 
are peculiar to America have in consequence given rise to words 
which have no counterparts in British usage. Thus the American 
baggage check has no equivalent in England, nor has cowcatcher, and 
the British have only their occasional forwarding agencies for the far- 
reaching American express, a word which has given rise to many 
characteristic American uses and combinations, such as express 
office, express wagon, express man, expressage, express train, and in 
the early days of Western life, pony express. 

Suburban life in America has given rise to the peculiarly American 
words commute, commuter, commutation. Some American railway 
terms have passed into general and even metaphorical applications, 
as in to side track, to sidewipe, now also used of automobiles, all 
aboard, to board, meaning to ascend into anything, cut rate, to switch, 
double track and single track, etc. In the case of the word szdewipe, 
however, it is doubtful if the word arose in connection with the rail- 
ways. There is a variant form sideswipe, and in the New English 
Dictionary the word is described as occurring in British dialects and 
in the United States. The dictionary gives an example for 1757 in 
the sense of indirect rebuke or censure, and records it as occurring 
in the dialect glossaries of the northern counties of England. In this 
word it seems probable that an older and dialectal British usage has 
been given a new lease of life in America. 

The names of other forms of vehicular transportation are to 
some extent distinctive for American usage. The word transporta- 
tion itself has a characteristic American meaning. ‘‘Have you 
bought your transportation?” merely means ‘‘Have you bought 
your railway ticket?”” What is a street car in America is ordinarily a 
tramin England. The American street car is a much more important 
factor in American daily life than the tram is in England, and about 
it has consequently developed a rich and distinctive vocabulary. A 
trolley car, or merely a trolley, came in when electricity supplanted 
horses as a motive power. The trolley itself is now in danger of 


140 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


being supplanted by the automobile, the jztney, driven by a jitneur, 
and the ¢rollibus being already well established in some communities. 
The term jitneur was obviously made on the model of chauffeur. 
The trollibus, or trackless trolley, combines the characteristics of the 
bus and the trolley, hence the compound. 

Some few words associated with earlier methods of travel in 
America have now only a lingering or dictionary existence. The 
prairie schooner was the picturesque name for a covered wagon, the 
ship of the desert of the early western emigrant. The Conestoga 
wagon also figures largely in the early annals of emigration in Amer- 
ica. These wagons were made at Conestoga, Lancaster County, 
Pennsylvania, whence their name. Similar wagons in other regions 
are known as bolster wagons, Conklin wagons, boomer wagons, etc. 
The Conestoga wagons were the freighters of the period before the 
railways, and from the name of the wagon in an abbreviated form 
the word stogy seems to have arisen, meaning goods, usually not of 
the highest quality, brought in the wagon, such as shoes and cigars, 
see Dialect Notes, I, 229, 237. In Texas inferior cattle are also called 
stogies. 

In Peters, General History of Connecticut, p. 235, occurs the 
name whiskey, evidently as the name of a light vehicle: ‘‘There are 
few coaches in the colony, but many chaises and whiskeys.” In 
country regions the name dandy wagon is still in current use for a 
light single-seated wagon, though the automobile, with a rich and 
distinctive vocabulary of its own, is rapidly crowding out all older 
vehicles like this, as well as the terminology that applied to them. 
A generation ago a Studebaker meant a kind of heavy farm wagon 
with high sides, but now the visions called forth by the word are not 
so humble. The buckboard and the surrey are also common Ameri- 
can names for vehicles little used in England. 

When travel was restricted largely to travel on horseback, cer- 
tain uses were current which now are lost. One of these was the use 
of oat as a verb, meaning to give a feeding of oats. It occurs fre- 
quently in the diary of John Adams, II, 199 (1766), ‘we all oated 
at Martin’s”’; II, 276 (1771), ‘‘Took my departure from Middletown 


VOCABULARY 141 


homeward the same way I went down; very hot; oated at Hart- 
ford.” In Carlton’s New Purchase instead of tying his horse to the 
hitching rack a rider usually hangs it to the hitching rack. This 
word occurs also in a realistic bit of dialogue in Stone’s Life and 
Times of Red Jacket (1829), p. 29: ‘“‘Suppose, now, a ‘Riproarer’ of 
Kentuck should ride up to the door of a ‘young earthquake,’ on the 
Red River—or, in other words, suppose, before Amos and Duff came 
to Washington to administer the government for General Jackson, 
that Amos should have called at the shanty of Duff in Missouri for 
a night’s lodging:—Do you think there would have been any such 
palavering as—‘Good evening, Mr. General Green: I am very 
happy to see you.’ And:—‘Why, how d’ye do, my dear Mr. Ken- 
dall??’ Not at all. The dialogue ... would have run thus:— 
Amos. ‘Holloa, there. Can I get to stay with you to-night?’ 
Duff. ‘Well, I reckon.’ Amos. ‘Then, boy, hang my _ horse.’ 
Duff. ‘And give him a smart chance of roughness and toat in his 
plunder.’ Amos. ‘A smart chunk of a boy, that.’ Duff. ‘Well, 
I reckon; but here’s the crack honeylove in the gum.’ Amos. ‘I 
don’t quite let on to that.’’”? The ‘“‘honeylove in the gum”’ is the 
baby, the gum being the hollow bee-gum tree from which the cradle 
was made. 


To give a full list of distinctively American names of foods would 
take one a long though pleasant journey. Many of these names 
are now archaic or obsolete. The hog and hominy of the older dic- 
tionaries of Americanisms now suggests the days of Davy Crockett. 
Similarly archaic is the chicken fixings which appears so commonly 
in accounts of early frontier life. But many characteristic foods 
and their names survive, hoe cake, johnny cake, pone, buckwheat 
cakes, flapjacks, and to these have been added a recent vocabulary 
of breakfast foods and ‘‘cereals” that alone would fill a volume. 
Perhaps roasting ears and sliced peaches carry as full an American 
flavor as any two names of foods. The American climate is respon- 
sible for the popularity of ice cream and the soda fountain, about 
which no doubt as rich a technical vocabulary is collecting as for- 


142 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


merly enriched the language of the American bar. One of these 
words, the Sunday or sundae, a combination of ice cream and sugar 
syrup of various flavors, is explained by Tucker, American English, 
p. 306, as having originated ‘‘about 1897, at Red Cross Pharmacy, 
State Street, Ithaca, N. Y., directly opposite to barroom of Ithaca 
Hotel, which was closed on Sunday, suggesting to the pharmacy 
people to offer a distinctively Sunday drink.’ The explanation is 
circumstantial but not convincing, being the kind of explanation 
which so readily appears after the event. Various newspaper cor- 
respondents have given practically the same explanation of the ori- 
gin of the word, varying it however in the chronology and geography. 

So also the term porterhouse steak has been attached to various 
different persons and places in the attempt to explain its origin. 
The New York Times for March 9, 1928, recorded the death of an aged 
woman who soon after the close of the Civil War ‘‘became cook at 
the Porter House in North Cambridge, Mass.,’’ and who ‘‘ developed 
such skill in carving steaks from the sides of heavy beef that the 
tender cuts she served became known as porterhouse steaks.’? Un- 
fortunately for this explanation, Thornton gives citations for porter- 
house steak in America as early as 1848. The term porterhouse is 
old, a porterhouse being a drinking place where steaks might be 
served, just as a chophouse is a place where drinks may be served. 
The early citations of porterhouse as an adjective applied to steak 
are all American, but according to the New English Dictionary, the 
term porterhouse steak is now also current in England. 

On the other hand, there is little doubt that the Parker House 
roll took its name from Parker House in Boston. It may be pointed 
out, however, that Parker House roll is not an essential part of the 
daily vocabulary of Americans as are porterhouse steak and sundae. 

Chewing-gum, popcorn and peanuts are words and things dear to 
the popular American fancy through many years of holiday associ- 
ation. Chewing-gum seems to have been a Yankee invention, the 
chewing of spruce gum being the Yankee maiden’s substitute for 
the masculine tobacco. Thornton’s first citation is for 1836. With 
the passing of tobacco as a polite masticatory and with the com- 


VOCABULARY 143 


mercial manufacturing of chewing-gum from chicle, the habit has 
spread until it has become an almost universal popular American 
custom. | 

The mention of foods suggests the places in which foods are 
eaten, and an interesting study might be made of the vocabulary of 
public places of refreshment in America. The commonest name for 
these places is perhaps café, and from café has been derived a new 
word, cafeterxa, not yet known to the dictionaries but familiar to 
every American. This word probably originated in California, per- 
haps in Los Angeles, where the cafeteria first flourished. There is no 
other English word like it on the analogy of which it could have been 
formed. There is of course bacteria and Latin words like materia, 
but these seem remote. The suggestion for the word was probably 
Spanish cafetera, ‘‘coffee-pot.’”? The accent in cafeterza is sometimes 
on the penult, but the custom now seems to be establishing itself of 
stressing the antepenult. On the analogy of cafeteria, new words 
have been formed, designating places conducted on the principle of 
self service, such as groceteria, caketeria, candyteria, pastreria, a pastry 
shop, drugeteria. A somewhat similar development is that which 
started with emporium, the ambitious name for what was considered 
to be a big store, the word being then extended in the forms swito- 
rium, pantorium to name a tailor’s shop. 

In Boston and New England a restaurant is often called a spa, 
this word being originally the name of a watering place in Belgium, 
then by extension in British use, any place of entertainment and 
refreshment. New England probably borrowed this use from 
England. 


Words which pertain to the convivial life are likely to be numerous 
and distinctive in every language, and those of American English, 
especially names of American drinks, are particularly so. Mixed 
drinks were the special development of the American bar, and the 
American bartender was an artistic combiner as well as a mere dis- 
penser of fluids. The jocose element naturally appears in many of 
these words, as in cock-tazl, cult’s tail, corn juice, flip, fogcutter, anti- 


144 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


fogmatic, gin sling, hail storm, red eye, smile, for all of which, and for 
many more like these, citations will be found in Thornton. It is 
such words that make one realize the fleet-footedness of time. 

The American saloon has been a special development of city life 
and the word has acquired certain ignoble connotations which arose 
from those conditions which have now brought about the almost 
complete extinction of the saloon by process of law. In earlier days, 
the drinking place was commonly called a tavern, and it provided, 
or was supposed to provide, all the entertainment that was required 
for man or beast. The number of taverns, however, soon tended to 
increase beyond the needs of the community, and one finds in the 
early colonial town records efforts to limit the number of places 
thus licensed. Among his many other activities, Noah Webster was 
an untiring advocate of limitation and economy in the use and sale 
of intoxicants. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 
however, the number of places at which whisky and other alcoholic 
beverages were sold was very large, and many of them were not of 
highly reputable character. Such were the doggeries, groggeries, 
grog shops, groceries, corner groceries, at which the disorderly elements 
of a community tended to congregate. According to Summerfield, 
Desperadoes of the Southwest, New York, 1847, pp. 21-22, the word 
doggery had two pronunciations. ‘‘When they are speaking of a 
genteel doggery,’’ says Summerfield, ‘“‘they sound the last syllable 
like e—doggeree. But when they refer to one of a lower order, they 
give the last syllable the sound of i with a long accent, as doggeri.”’ 
Summerfield quotes a song, 


‘‘On the wings of love I’ll fly 
From doggeree to doggery,”’ 


And two other lines, 


‘The stars shine in the hollow sky, 
But I shine in a doggery.” 


The saloon was a place of a higher type for which a finer and 
more ambitious word was necessary, for which, indeed, a finer word 
was sacrificed, since the word did not avail to save or elevate the 


VOCABULARY 145 


saloon, and since now it has become practically impossible in America 
to use the word except in its degraded sense. The remark of Cooper, 
Notions (1828), I, 101, that ‘‘a man needs no small servitude in the 
more graceful schools of the Continent to figure to advantage in a 
saloon,” has now a ludicrous color not at all in Cooper’s mind when 
he wrote. Walt Whitman attempted to restore the word saloon 
to dignified use, but it is dignified in Whitman only by virtue of 
a poet’s license. That the degrading of the word was not due 
entirely to American usage is evident from the British use of 
hatrdresser’s saloon, billiard saloon, see Hall, Modern English, 
p. 251, note. 

Three words, spree, spunk, and spry, all of obscure origin, may be 
noted here. These words are found in British dialects, but have 
become much more general in American than in British usage. The 
same may be said of spittoon, first recorded for 1840, and cuspidor(e), 
an old word which gained currency when the object it named became 
an essential convenience in American society. The appearance of 
the cuspidor as an article of household furniture and its later dis- 
appearance might be made leading motives in two chapters of the 
history of American culture. The smoking and chewing of tobacco 
have been established customs almost from the beginning of the 
settlement of the country. The pleasant vice of the use of tobacco 
soon became international, however, and there is little about it now 
distinctively American, except perhaps chewing, now a disappearing 
habit. Madam Knight in her Journal (1704), p. 48, described a 
tobacco chewer of her day and in doing so used an unrecorded word. 
“Being at a merchant’s house,” she says, ‘“‘in comes a tall country 
fellow, wt» his alfogeos full of Tobacco; for they seldome Loose their 
Cudd, but keep Chewing and Spitting as long as they’r eyes are 
open.” Madam Knight’s name for the exudate is Aromatick Tinc- 
ture. Examples of another term, ambeer, will be found by consulting 
the indexes to Dialect Notes. The word alfogeos is probably a cor- 
ruption of Spanish alforja, saddle bag. It is recorded in the New 
English Dictionary, under the form of alfoges, as the name of the 
cheek pouch of the baboon. 


146 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The names of American sports, especially baseball and football, 
are in many instances characteristically American. The language 
of sport always tends to develop into a highly complicated slang or 
technical vocabulary, and this has been especially true of American 
baseball. Some of this vocabulary, however, has passed into general 
use, and every American knows what a home run is, what it is to be 
off one’s base, to strike out, to pound wind, to muff a fly, to make a foul, 
to get one’s innings, to get on to one’s curves. 

The game of poker has long been a popular American diversion, 
and from it and other games of cards, a number of words and phrases 
have passed into general use. Among these may be mentioned 
to bluff, cash in, cash in one’s chips, flush, four-flusher, square deal, 
trump. 


Certain features of the religious life have added to the picturesque- 
ness of American life and the American vocabulary. The camp- 
meeting, as it flourished in the first half of the nineteenth century, 
was commented on by many travelers in America and elaborately 
described by some. From these phases of popular religious experience 
have come expressions like to get religion, mourner’s bench, the Amen 
corner, revival, and other similar words. A synonym for revival 
which has now passed out of use is the word attention, or the phrase 
period of attention. ‘‘A Revival of Religion,” says Dwight, Life of 
Jonathan Edwards, p. 126, ‘“‘is nothing but the immediate result of 
an uncommon Attention, on the part of a church and congregation, 
to the Truth of God.” Throughout Dwight’s book, attention and 
period of attention are used in the established sense of revival of 
religion. 

In America the word church has not the specialized meaning 
which permits it to be applied in England only to the established 
church. In American usage the difference between a church and a 
chapel, as the words are ordinarily used, is that a chapel is a smaller 
building than a church. The word chapel has of course technical 
ecclesiastical uses, but these have not colored the common under- 
standing of the word. The meeting house of colonial times and the 


VOCABULARY 147 


phrase ‘“‘go to meeting”’ are now archaic terms, seldom used, except 
among the Quakers, even by old-fashioned persons. The lack of an 
established church in America has also occasioned a free and undis- 
criminated popular use of the terms minister, pastor, clergyman, 
preacher, parson. Ecclesiastics themselves may insist on certain 
proprieties in the use of these terms, the Presbyterians that minister 
belongs especially to them, the Episcopalians that clergyman is their 
appropriate word, but popular usage knows no such distinctions, 
except in the word rector, which is not, however, a popular word in 
America, and in priest, which is commonly limited in application 
to the Roman Catholic church. The circuit rider of an earlier period 
is no longer familiar as a person or a word. The word dominie, 
in the sense of minister or pastor, is still occasionally used as a 
somewhat facetious term. It came into American use, according 
to Thornton, through the Dutch settlements of New York and 
New Jersey. 

The many varieties of religious experience in America have pro- 
duced a number of words of more or less general and lasting charac- 
ter to name them, Shakers, Hard Shell Baptists, Come Outers, Holy 
Rollers, Mormons, Danites, and others. 


The American college has developed various features peculiar to 
itself and also an appropriate vocabulary to accompany them. 
Most of these special words belong to the ephemeral vocabulary of 
student slang, of which various collections have been made.: The 
use of the words college and hall has varied a great deal at different 
times and places, the former sometimes meaning the institution as a 
whole, sometimes merely a building, sometimes the undergraduate 
part as distinguished from the graduate part of a university.’ 

The campus is distinctive for American college life, both the thing 
itself and the name for it. The first known occurrence of the word is 
in manuscript at Princeton in 1774, but after that it is not found 


1 See Dialect Notes, II, 3 ff., 135 ff., IV, 231 ff. Similar collections might be made 
for preparatory schools and for high schools, see Dialect Notes, V, 60 ff. 
2 Full illustrations are given by Albert Matthews, Dialect Notes, II, 91 ff. 


148 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


until 1821 in an extract from the minutes of South Carolina College.* 
All the early records of the word seem to be localized at Princeton 
or in the South. In this connection it may be noted that Princeton 
in its early years maintained specially intimate connections with the 
South.2 At Harvard and Yale the traditional word was the Yard 
or the Green. Within the last generation or two, however, the word 
has spread rapidly and now is in use at practically all American col- 
leges, sometimes meaning the college grounds as a whole, sometimes 
a limited portion of the grounds. The question of the origin of the 
term is unsettled. Apparently no similar use has ever arisen in 
England and the word campus is not entered in the New English 
Dictionary. It is not probable that the word in American use orig- 
inated in connection with college field sports, for these were not a 
prominent part of American college life until after the word had 
become established; neither does the word campus ordinarily mean 
the place where the young barbarians play, this being usually called 
a field, or athletic field. It is probable that the word arose from some 
connection with the Roman Campus Martius, and that even in early 
American college use, the militant significance of campus was upper- 
most. For if the college youth of America in the eighteenth and early 
nineteenth century were not much given to field sports, they were 
inclined to indulge in ‘‘riots”’ and college fights, the earlier equiva- 
lents of intercollegiate matches and games. Some of the earliest 
occurrences of the word clearly indicate a meaning ‘‘field of battle.”’ 
Thus in Simms, Guy Rivers, I, 189 (1834), quoted in Thornton, we 
read: ‘‘He acted on the present occasion precisely as he might have 
done in the College Campus, with all the benefits of a fair field and 
a plentiful crowd of backers.”’ In Longstreet, Georgia Scenes, p. 73 
(1835), in a passage not in Thornton, the author satirically describes 
a performer on the piano in terms of the fray: ‘‘She brought her hands 
to the campus [the keyboard] this time in fine style, and they seemed 
now to be perfectly reconciled to each other.”” In another passage in 


1See Matthews, The Term ‘‘Campus”’ in American Colleges, in Transactions of 
the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, III, 431-437 (1897). 
2 See Collins, Princeton, pp. 93-94. 


VOCABULARY 149 


Thornton for 1840, Mr. Colquitt of Georgia says: ‘‘We are told that 
the Abolition battle must be fought at the north; that we must deal 
kindly here, to afford a campus for their chivalry at home.”’ These 
three illustrations establish an early southern use of the word campus 
in the sense of a place or field of combat, and it seems not improbable 
that it was with this sense that the college use of the word started 
on its career. 


Perhaps the richest field for the invention of new words and new 
applications of words has been found in the world of politics. Since 
the establishment of the Union, politics has been the sole business of 
many and an engrossing pastime of almost all citizens of the republic. 
The full picturesqueness of American political discussion did not 
develop, however, until the opening up of the West, that is, the West 
of the Ohio valley, brought these regions into political importance. 
Then the Injin fighter was the popular presidential candidate, 
and Jeffersonian simplicity took on the more variegated hue of 
Jacksonian crudity and backwoods freedom in conduct and speech. 
The stump speaker was the appropriate orator to appear before 
frontier audiences, and the log rolling, which in the literal sense was 
a necessary part of the clearing of new land, readily suggested itself 
as a useful term, in a metaphorical sense, in the realm of politics. 
Another contribution from the frontier life of the second and third 
decades of the nineteenth century was the phrase ‘‘to row a man up 
Salt River,’ meaning to defeat him in politics. Salt River is a river 
in Kentucky which in the days of river travel was notorious for diffi- 
culty of navigation. The name suggested many fancies to the 
political humorist; according to Jack Downing, p. 319, ‘‘Salt River 
runs up stream,” which supposedly would make it easy to navigate 
for any one who might be constrained to navigate it. The term with 
many others is passing out of use as American politics become more 
serious and matter of fact than they were in the old days of the pic- 
turesque politicians. In the meantime, however, the language has 
fortunately been enriched by the addition of a number of useful and 
concrete political expressions. Among these may be mentioned 


150 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


barbecue and burgoo, to wave the bloody shirt, boodle, buncombe, on the 
fence, favorite son, filibuster, gerrymander, lobby, mugwump, ptipe- 
laying, carpet bagger, wire puller, wire pulling, influence, rabble rouser, 
platform, caucus, the floor, as in to speak on the floor, etc., copper- 
head, boss, heeler, to cut a melon, pork, pork barrel. If some of these 
terms seem to be of cynical significance, one may take comfort in the 
thought that they also convey valuable lessons. Most of them are 
discussed, with others, in Norton’s Political Americanisms, but a 
rich field for historical study and illustration still remains unex- 
plored. Some of them, for example, buncombe, gerrymander, mugwump, 
have become current also in England and must be counted as per- 
manent and general additions to the English vocabulary. The ety- 
mology of gerrymander, from the proper name Gerry, combined 
with the last two syllables of salamander, now being forgotten, the 
initial consonant is sometimes mistakenly pronounced with a soft 
instead of a hard g. 

The word platform had other established uses before it was em- 
ployed as a political term. 'The Connecticut churches, at Saybrook, 
in 1708, agreed upon a set of principles, known as the Platform of the 
Connecticut Churches, Dwight, Life of Jonathan Edwards, p. 113. 
A still earlier use, showing that the word was a familiar village term, 
occurs in Hempstead Records, I, 175 (1665), ‘‘Alotment of land... 
lieing in or About Matenacoke so Commonly Called as will Apeare 
by the plott forme.” 


The terminology of the military life in the United States no doubt 
has many peculiar features on the popular and familiar sides, but 
in its organization the American army has always been practically 
the same as the British army, and so naturally the official vocabularies 
of the two armies have remained very similar. Some few differences, 
however, are noteworthy. 

In England the official phrase for the person known in America 
as the Secretary of War is the Secretary for War, this being an abbre- 
viation of the full title, the Secretary of State for War. The title 
lieutenant is ordinarily, and also in official circles, pronounced [’eft- 


VOCABULARY 151 


nent] in England, but the New English Dictionary correctly states 
that [ljut’enont] is used exclusively in the United States. The 
word doughboy, meaning infantryman, is not official, but it has 
passed out of slang into general use. The New English Dictionary 
contains the word, defining it as nautical and as meaning a boiled 
dumpling of raised dough. The transition to the meaning infantry- 
man has not been clearly traced. According to one explanation, 
given by Mrs. Custer, Tenting on the Plains, p. 516, it originated 
“early in the Civil War from the term doughboy being applied to the 
large globular brass buttons on the Infantry uniform and so passed 
by natural transition to the Infantrymen themselves.’”’ Various other 
origins for the word are offered by Moss, Officers’ Manual, p. 295, 
but none seems convincing. 

The American army toast is How!/, a word of many explanations. 
The most reasonable, see Moss, Officers’ Manual, p. 296, is that the 
word, spelled also hough, hoo, ho and ehow, was an Indian word, 
meaning perhaps Thanks, and that this Indian word was adopted by 
some regiment on frontier service, spreading thence through the 
whole army. 

A uniform coat is called a blouse in the United States army, but a 
tunic in the British army. The barrack regulations require that a 
soldier’s garments shall be arranged as follows: ‘‘Middle compart- 
ment: hung on hooks — overcoat, blouse, trousers, haversack . . .” 
etc. Other terms for parts of the American soldier’s equipment are 
campaign hat, shelter tent, and shelter half. 

The word retreat as the name of a bugle call is not given in the 
New English Dictionary and presumably is not in British use. In 
the Manual of Guard Duty by Andrews, Fundamentals of Military 
Service, p. 224, one of the directions reads ‘‘between reveille and 
retreat, to turn out the guard for all persons designated by the 
Commanding Officer.’”” The name of another American bugle call is 
the long roll, and so also, in the plural form, boots and saddles, the signal 
to mounted troops that their formation is to be mounted. Corres- 
ponding to the British last post, every night at eleven o’clock in 
the American army, taps is sounded. Moss, Officers’ Manual, p. 292, 


152 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


says that the custom of sounding taps over a soldier’s grave was 
inaugurated at West Point in 1840, and became general during the 
Civil War, since which time it has been sounded at every military 
funeral. 

In army transportation, the term Dougherty wagon is familiar and 
the thing itself is described by Farrow, Dictionary of Military Terms. 
The New English Dictionary notes that police in the military sense is 
peculiar to the United States. Police duty in the American army can 
include such domestic tasks as sweeping, scrubbing and cleaning up 
generally. 

The term canteen as the name for a profit-sharing store to be used 
by the enlisted men was current in the United States, as in England, 
until Congress some twenty years ago was instigated to forbid the 
sale of beer and light wines in army canteens and also to change the 
name to Post Exchange. 

The word fogy, fogie, fogey is an American colloquialism in the 
army and navy, meaning an increase in pay by reason of length of 
service. An officer’s servant, called a batman in the English army, 
in the United States army js known as a striker. 


Various occupational pursuits have added some of its individual 
characteristics to the American vocabulary. The language of specu- 
lation and the stock market has flourished so richly as to become in 
itself almost a special speech or dialect. Like most highly differen- 
tiated occupations it has developed a technical vocabulary of its own, 
special uses for example of ordinary words like long and short, bull 
and bear, and hundreds of metaphorical phrases such as freeze out, a 
look in, gold brick, bucket shop. Comparatively few of these words 
and phrases have passed out of the class of technical or trade vocabu- 
lary into general use. 

The business of cattle raising has appealed to the American imagi- 
nation and, as its more romantic aspects are passing away, it has left 
numerous vestiges in the American vocabulary. Every American 
lad aspires at some time to be a cowboy, to tighten the cinch on his 
pony, to take part in a rownd up, when the cattle are driven into a 


VOCABULARY 153 


corral, or if they will not be driven, are roped in and branded, on which 
occasion they naturally kick like a steer. The cowboy also had his 
more specialized occupations and amusements, such as bronco bust- 
ing, shooting up, and painting towns red. The word stamping 
ground, originally the place where cattle congregated and stamped 
to keep the flies off, has passed into general metaphorical use in the 
sense of a place of habitual resort. Like all highly developed busi- 
nesses, cattle raising on the commercial side has acquired a large 
technical vocabulary of its own. A canner, for example, is an animal 
of not the best grade, but good enough for canning. As in brozler, 
the ending of the noun of agency in these words indicates not one 
who cans or broils, but that which is canned or broiled. Other 
similar terms are stockers and feeders. 


A remarkably active world now is that of the moving picture and 
from it a number of new words have passed into general use. The 
exhibitions themselves are ordinarily referred to as the movies. From 
the methods of the actors in making moving picture films comes the 
verb register, meaning to express an emotion by an appropriate facial 
gesture. From the noun film a verb to film has been made, and dozens 
of other words, originally technical in this profession, have passed 
over into the general vocabulary of the language. 


The American weather has not contributed any large number of 
words to the peculiar speech of the people. One thinks immediately 
of blizzard, cold snap, hot wave, cyclone, hot spell, and cold spell, of 
muggy as an indispensable word on the Atlantic seaboard,and of a few 
more like these. Each locality no doubt has its favorite weather 
words, dependent on the qualities of its climate. Asa whole, however, 
the main characteristics of American climate are diversity and 
changeableness, qualities which do not readily lend themselves to 
description by epithet. 

Every people must have its set of words or phrases which are 
used for the constantly recurring everyday situations of life, words 
and phrases of not very precise logical content, but satisfactory never- 


154 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


theless because the situations in which they are used do not call for 
logical precision. These words are often merely words of approval 
or assent, or the reverse, and often they seem to be scarcely more 
than oratorical pauses, as it were, dropped in to fill space but not to 
express a great deal of thought. Thus the common expression of 
assent or approval in America is All right. As a phrase this is no 
better, and no worse, than the Britisher’s Very good. In the interest 
of economy, some such phrase is necessary, and whatever phrase is 
used is bound to become stereotyped. Words employed for emphasis 
vary in strength all the way from slight metaphor, as in fine used as 
a general word of approval, through more violent stages of slang and 
imprecation. No emphasizing word in America, however, has aroused 
such bitter hostility as the word bloody in England, nor is it impossible 
in America as it would be in England to use the word szck in the sense 
of ill, or even in the general metaphorical sense of being tired or weary 
ofathing. For Yes, Sir, No, Sir, as emphatic affirmative and negative 
phrases, examples will be found in Thornton, where one can also 
examine uses of nohow, no way you can fix it, no two ways about it, 
nery, that’s so, most (for almost), eenamost, and other phrases which 
now have the flavor of the rustic life of another generation. The 
intensive, That’s a fact, may still be heard, however, in cultivated 
American speech. ‘I just don’t know, Joe, that’s a fact,” says the 
heroine in Parrish, My Lady of the South, p. 21, a girl who supposedly 
represents the aristocracy of the South; but p. 22, a negro slave says, 
“Ye see, he never done treated dis nigger ver’ nice, dat’s a fact, fer 
shore.” The use of well as a sentence beginner seems to be more 
deeply seated as a habit in America than in England. It has long 
been one of the marks of literary attempts to indicate the drawling 
rustic Yankee. So also has been the use of guess and calculate as 
constantly repeated words in the sense of think or suppose. The 
second of these has disappeared from present use, but guess is still 
universally heard in America as a somewhat colorless word implying 
merely intention. A synonym for American guess is reckon, freely 
used in Southern cultivated and popular speech. 

As a general word for expressing mild surprise at meeting with 


VOCABULARY 155 


something unexpected, American English has a variety of possibilities. 
The colorless literary words are strange, remarkable, extraordinary, 
besides phrases, as Isn’t that funny? or Isn’t that queer? Isn’t that the 
limit? Can you beat it? That beats the Dutch, That gets me, That gets 
my goat, Wouldn’t that jar you? and others like these, more or less 
colored by the ephemeral associations of slang. For an older genera- 
tion in New England, characteristic phrases were Do tell, and I want 
to know, both now lost except as very provincial and archaic survivals. 
More recent than well are the words say and listen used as general 
introductions to sentences, more recent and perhaps on a lower cul- 
tural level. Words like these, however, are just the ones that give 
intimate colloquial color to the speech of a people. The use of mad 
as a frequent substitute for words of more precise meaning, such as 
vexed, annoyed, angry, must also be counted among characteristic 
American habits. As in the case of guess, reckon and other words of 
this type, it 1s easy to see how the American use has been derived, 
and good examples of the American use can doubtless be found in 
British English. What makes these words significant for American 
English is not the precise logical content given to them, but the 
fact that they are employed so continually as to make them parts 
of the convenient small change of social communication. 


Despite the great mingling of races which has taken place in 
America, American English has been very slow to borrow new words 
from other languages. The main reason for this has already been 
given, that the foreign immigrant in America was almost always on 
a lower social level than the native population, that he strove there- 
fore to acquire as many of the social habits and customs of the 
American as he could, and as rapidly as he could. In consequence 
his foreign speech was likely to become heavily charged with bor- 
rowed American words, though the American would feel no impulse 
to borrow from the foreigner’s language, and the foreigner himself, 
when he spoke English, would try to keep it as free as possible of the 
words of his despised foreign idiom. Examples of foreign languages 
which have become more or less Anglicized through the incorpora- 


156 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


tion of American words are the Pennsylvania German of Pennsyl- 
vania and the Valley of Virginia', Swedish, Italian, Polish, Yiddish, 
and various other languages, especially as they are spoken in crowded 
city communities. As most of these foreigners are directly engaged 
in manual occupations, as laborers, janitors, truckmen, through all 
stages to that of the skilled artisan, it is very natural that they should 
readily take over many of the concrete terms of their trades and 
surroundings. None of these mixed foreign languages, however, has 
shown any possibility of establishing itself as a reputable language, 
permanently utilizable for literature and cultivated intercourse. 
Pennsylvania German has a certain amount of literature of its own, 
and a kind of American Swedish is used in some of the Swedish news- 
papers printed in America. Italian, as modified by American English, 
appears in some interesting literary performances, conveniently 
reviewed by Livingston, La Merica Sanemagogna, Romanic Review, 
IX, 206-226. 

As Americans have always been insulated from contact with 
foreign languages, from those which flourished about them because 
of social prejudice, and from the cultivated languages of other lands 
by ignorance of them, one would not expect to find in the American 
language any large number of foreign importations. More foreign 
words appear to have come in through Spanish and French than from 
any other source. Most of the Spanish words were first localized 
in the West and Southwest, and in these regions many more Spanish 
words are locally in use, through direct intercourse with the Mexicans 
and Greasers, than would be commonly known in other parts of the 
country. Among the Spanish words generally familiar may be 
mentioned adobe, broncho, cafeteria, calaboose, chaparral, corral, 
coyote, ultimately of Indian origin, and so also is pirogue, placer, as 
in placer mining, pawpaw, potato, quirt, probably from Spanish corto, 
extended to mean the short riding whip of the plainsman, lariat, 
mustang, ranch, rodeo, sombrero, stampede, tobacco, and vamoose, 


1 Perhaps the earliest literary example of German-English in America is to be 
found in The Anglo-German: A Dialogue, Philadelphia, Oct., 1800, in The Monthly 
Mirror and American Review, III (1800), pp. 327-328. 


VOCABULARY 157 


vamose. An abbreviated form of chapparejos appears as chaps, 
pronounced [{fzps], a kind of riding trousers, and from Spanish 
cincha, girth, comes cinch, current in familiar colloquial speech in the 
sense of certainty of attainment, as the cowboy is certain when he has 
fastened the girths of his saddle. Several foods, especially hot tamale 
and chili con carne, have carried with them their Spanish names. 
Among words of French origin may be noted bayou, butte, cache, cart- 
bou, coulee, crevasse, glacier, levee, plateau, portage, prairie, all topo- 
graphical words or words having to do with the life of the woods. 
In some regions of Canada and the northern United States a word 
which may be spelled brooly is in spoken use as the name for an open 
grassy place in the forest. This is from French brulé, and means 
ground burnt over upon which grass afterwards grows. Broolys 
were in effect incipient prairies. Several other words of French 
origin are buccaneer, depot, mardi gras, originally used only of a feast 
in New Orleans but later commonly used of town celebrations in 
general. The words cent and dime as names of pieces of money in 
America were derived from French. So also, apparently, was the 
word picayune, being originally the French name of a Spanish coin. 

Literary words from German, such as hezmweh, wanderlust, welt- 
schmertz, gemiithlichke:t, hinterland, are not peculiar to America, nor 
can they be said to have become popularized. Popular German 
words are in the main words which have to do with eating or drink- 
ing, as in rathskeller, stein, stube, as in wein stube, lager, bock, wiener 
wurst, pretzel, smear case, sauerkraut, zwieback, delicatessen. In edu- 
cational circles, kindergarten is now a current word. The word 
standpoint was formed after German Standpunkt, but apparently 
first in England, the New English Dictionary giving examples begin- 
ning with 1829. 

Words derived from Dutch are more numerous and some of them 
have interesting histories. Contrary to the common opinion, how- 
ever, it has been shown by Albert Matthews, Dialect Notes, II, 199- 
224, by abundant citation as early as 1638 in Virginia, that the word 
state house is not of Dutch origin, but an old native compound. The 
word scup, a children’s swing, from Dutch schop, is still current in 


158 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


New York. It is recorded in the Century Dictionary. The words 
snoop and spook, adopted from the Dutch and first used in America, 
have now passed also into British use. The same is true of the word 
boss. In New Amsterdam, the Dutch original of boss was an official 
title, and when the representatives from the United Colonies came to 
New Amsterdam to treat concerning the points at issue between 
the settlers of Connecticut and the Dutch, they signed their docu- 
ments ‘‘From our Place of Residence at the Basses house in the 
Manhatoes,”’ Hazard, Historical Collections, II, 286 (1653), and 
several other places. The later history of the word is illustrated by 
the citations in the dictionaries, and its phonetic history has been 
discussed in another connection. Cooper, in his American Demo- 
crat (1838), says that boss was taken from Dutch because white 
laborers objected to master as the term used by negro slaves. In The 
Chainbearer (1846) he speaks of boss as ‘“‘that Manhattanese word.” 

It is possible that another Dutch officer has given his name to a 
phrase commonly current in America, though the chain of evidence 
to prove this is not complete. This is the phrase a good scout. When 
one speaks of a person as a good scout, one means that he is a good, 
reasonable fellow to live with, not precisely a hail fellow well met, 
but one who makes life comfortable for those with whom he associ- 
ates. Now this meaning does not seem very similar to the ordinary 
meaning of scout as one who spies out the land. This latter sense 
of the word comes directly from the Old French original of the word 
as it appears in escoute, cognate to Latin auscultare. The Dutch word 
schout seems closer in meaning, and from the phonetic point of view 
gives just as regularly the English form scout. In New Amsterdam 
the schout was a town officer whose duties were a combination ‘of 
those pertaining now to the Mayor, Sheriff, and District Attorney,” 
Earle, ‘‘The Stadthuys of New Amsterdam,” in Historic New York, 
I, 50. ‘‘He also presided in the court . . . so it may be plainly 
seen that an offender could be arrested, prosecuted, and judged by 
one and the same person . . . but the bench of magistrates had one 
useful power—that of mitigating and altering the sentence demanded 
by the schout. And we frequently find in the records many changes 


VOCABULARY 159 


of the sentences through this power. ...I have not noted any 
cases where the schout’s fine or sentence was increased by the magis- 
trates’””—though often it was mitigated. Irving, Knickerbocker His- 
tory, Book III, Chap. IT, uses the term bailiff as a synonym for the 
schout of New Amsterdam, whose office was similar to that of the 
schout in Holland. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, Remark H, ob- 
serves of the houses of pleasure at Amsterdam, where sailors resort 
in great numbers to be merry, that ‘‘the schout and his officers are 
always vexing, mulcting, and, upon the least complaint, removing 
the miserable keepers of them.” From these accounts it would 
appear that a good scout in the days of New Amsterdam was notable 
chiefly because of his rarity, and the phrase may thus have persisted 
even after the schout, as a public officer, had passed into history. 
Further examples of the use of the word are needed, however, defi- 
nitely to establish this line of development. At Oxford, a college 
servant who prepares and brings a student’s meals to his rooms is 
called a scout. Hence apparently the phrase to scout around, mean- 
ing to hunt up food for a meal, or to hunt up any object needed for 
a practical purpose. Is this word Old French escoute or Dutch 
schout? It is quite probable that the two meanings have become 
more or less mingled in later use, but it remains probable also that 
we have in modern English scout two originally different words. 
That the word was commonly current in English use in America is 
evident from its presence in entries like the following in Hempstead 
Records, I, 295 (1674), “At a Jenerall townd Meting . . . Captin 
John semans was Elected . . . to kepe Cort with the scaut at Jemeco”’; 
also I, 334 (1674), “at a Cort held in Hempsted by the scout and 
MadJestrats.”’ 

Another official title, apparently an abbreviated form of fiskaal, 
is preserved in the Hempstead Records, I, 345 (1675), “Peter Johnson 
scule”; also I, 395 (1682) “peter Jonson scol’’; I, 440 (1684), “Pieter 
Johnson sckoll’’; I, 483 (1684), “Petter Johnson Schol,”’ these last two 
being signatures to documents. Peter Johnson is described, I, 482, 
as by trade a Cordwinder. He is often referred to merely as Peter 
Johnson, with no title added. 


160 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


In the Hempstead Records, I, 43 (1658), occurs the phrase one 
Hollands Accre or Morgen. The Dutch word morgen was thus cur- 
rently known on Long Island by the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury and it was frequently used, according to the Century Diction- 
ary, ‘‘in old conveyances of property along the Hudson river.”? The 
word is recorded in the New English Dictionary, the earliest citation 
being for 1674 in New Jersey. An interesting example here given is 
that for 1868, in the Report of the United States Commissioner of 
Agriculture, 1869, p. 151: ‘“‘connected with this department of for- 
estry are six thousand morgen of forest.’”?’ Examples are also given 
from South Africa, where the word is still current. Another Dutch 
word is preserved in the phrase, ‘‘one hundred schepells of wheate,”’ 
Hempstead Records, I, 43 (1658), the Dutch word being schepel, a 
measure for dry wares, a bushel. The liquid measure anker, ancker 
is mentioned frequently in early American records, for example, 
Hempstead Records, I, 59 (1658). It is of Dutch origin, but was in 
use in England also in the Elizabethan period, as the citations in the 
New English Dictionary show. Another term of liquid measurement 
which appears to be of Dutch origin is the word much, as in Hemp- 
stead Records, I, 291 (1673), where it is ordered that those persons 
who fail to report for certain assigned duties in the town “shall pay 
six muches of Rume to them that gose’”’; in the same records, I, 349 
(1676), we find a record of “‘five gallons and one quart an two muches 
of Rume.” This word is probably Dutch mutsje, a liquid measure 
of small amount, about one-eighth of a pint. The derivation pho- 
netically and logically is probable, the only doubt cast upon it being 
the presence in dialect English, as recorded in the New English 
Dictionary, of a word mutch, meaning a small cap. This word is not 
recorded in English as a term of measurement, but it is etymologically 
the same word as Dutch mutsje, this latter having a diminutive 
ending, and when one recalls the use of the word night cap, meaning 
a small drink, one would not be surprised to find the English mutch, 
much used as a term of liquid measure just as Dutch mutsje 
was used. If so, the word much in the Hempstead Records is of 
English origin. 


VOCABULARY 161 


The word stoop is of Dutch origin, but its use has been extended, 
especially in the phrase ‘‘the front stoop,’ to regions beyond those 
of Dutch influence. Cooper, Notions (1828), I, 149, remarks that 
‘“‘the New Yorkers (how much better is the word Manhattanese!) 
cherish the clumsy inconvenient entrances, I believe, as heirlooms of 
their Dutch progenitors. They are called ‘stoops,’ a word of whose 
derivation I am ignorant, though that may be of Holland too.” 
Webster, in his dictionary of 1828, defines stoop as meaning in 
America ‘‘a kind of shed, generally open, but attached to a house, 
also, an open place for seats at a door.” The latter was the common 
sense of the word, and Thornton gives examples in English as early 
as 1749. The stoop is defined by Irving, Knickerbocker History, as 
“the porch, commonly built in front of Dutch houses, with benches 
on each side.’”’? It was usually uncovered, and is well illustrated in 
the Century Dictionary, under stoop. One may note in passing that 
the varyingly proper use of stoop, porch, piazza, gallery, is only to be 
acquired by familiarity with local custom. 


Several Dutch words of topographical meaning have survived in 
close connection with the landscape. One of these is clove, from 
Dutch kloof, current in the Catskills in the sense of a long, narrow 
valley in the mountains. The word kill, meaning creek, stream, of 
Dutch origin, appears in many proper nouns, as in Catskill, Walkill, 
Sparkill, the Kill von Kull, and in central New York in a word naming 
a bend, or eddy, or a branch of a stream, variantly spelled binocle, 
binnacle, binnekill, bennakill, benderkill, with a variant binnewater, 
see Dialect Notes, II, 131-4. The spelling binnekzll is etymologically 
the most correct. The word kill doubtless underlies also the form 
skell, in Easthampton Records, II, 399 (1698), ‘‘they should be sett at 
y® end of bucks skell.”’ 


American words brought into the language through the negroes 
have been insignificant in number for the same reason that words 
were rarely borrowed from the language of the relatively uncultured 
foreign white immigrants. A few words like juba, a kind of dance, 


162 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


banjo, hoodoo, voodoo, pickaninny, exhaust the list of words of 
non-English origin that have been familiarized through their use 
by the negroes. The word jazz, naming a kind of dance and music 
made familiar and popular of recent years, is commonly said to be of 
negro, that is of African origin. But the chain of evidence is not 
complete, and it seems more probable that jazz is merely an old Eng- 
lish dialectal word suddenly brought into prominence. Wright, 
English Dialect Dictionary, records jass in the sense of violent motion, 
also the sound produced by a heavy blow, meanings which sufficiently 
describe jazz music and dancing. Against the supposition of African 
origin is the further fact that jazz is not an old and familiar word in 
negro dialect use. 

Scarcely longer than this list of supposedly non-English words 
from negro English is the number of English words that have special 
associations with negro life in America, such as cake-walk, aunt and 
uncle, mammy, buck, colored, colored person, coon, darkey and even of 
these some are facetious or now archaic. Negro sections of cities have 
sometimes received distinctive names, as the Jungle, Africa, Egypt, 
the Levee, by extension from the Levee at New Orleans where negroes 
congregate, Frog Town, Frog Hollow. The eponymous name for a 
negro Pullman porter is George. So far as language goes, however, 
there is very little evidence to show that the negroes are a special 
class in America, that they have developed a special idiom of their 
own or are addressed in a special idiom by their white fellow-citizens. 
The word tote, of unknown origin, has become characteristically 
Southern, by reason of its general use there, as in ‘‘I toted you (as 
they say in Virginia) up to Richmond,” Paulding, Letters from the 
South (1817), I, 54, but there is no evidence that it is of negro origin. 
It is mentioned as early as 1781 by President Witherspoon as being 
a Southernism. Webster, in the dictionary of 1828, describes tote as 
‘fa word used in slaveholding countries; said to have been introduced 
by the blacks.” The earliest citation in Thornton is for 1667, in a 
passage which localizes the word in Virginia, but does not use it in 
connection with negroes. His next citation is for 1816, after which 
examples are numerous. The word is probably a native dialect word, 


VOCABULARY 163 


brought to the southern states by the earliest settlers, which has per- 
sisted only in the colloquial speech, but as Thornton’s examples show, 
as abundantly in the speech of the whites as in that of the blacks. 
A noun toat occurs in Seba Smith’s My Thirty Years, p. 158, ‘‘Mr. 
Van Buren would eat up the whole toat of ’em,”’ apparently the whole 
load of them. 


Words borrowed from the Indian languages of North America 
have usually been names of natural places or objects, such as moccasin, 
tomahawk, wigwam, teepee, wickieup, succotash, hickory, squaw, squash, 
sachem, papoose, persimmon, wampum. The word Indian appears in 
the names of a number of plants, though Indian corn has long since 
been known simply as corn, thus causing a sharper differentiation 
between corn and wheat in America than obtains in England. The 
same applies to the word meal, which in America means corn meal, 
but which may be used in England for flour and in the phrase wheat- 
meal. The use of the word Indian in connection with corn meal still 
survives in the name of Indian pudding, which is Indian only in the 
sense that it is made of corn meal. Other popular names of plants 
containing the adjective Indian are Indian turnip for the root of 
the Jack in the Pulpit, Indian hemp, Indian paint-pot, Indian 
tobacco. The association of tobacco and the smoking of tobacco 
with Indians is one of the disappearing traditions of American life. 
Formerly a cigar store, that is a place where cigars and tobacco were 
sold, was not complete without a big wooden Indian standing in front 
for a sign. Now the wooden Indian has gone the way of his human 
predecessor, has gone the way of the barber’s pole, the tavern sign, 
and other symbols of an older civilization. The tradition still: sur- 
vives, however, in the phrase, dumb as a wooden Indian. 

During the Great War, the word napoo, napu was current among 
the soldiers. It meant ended, finished, killed, as in ‘‘There’s a pretty 
big crowd of ours still lying na-poo-ed out there,’ C. A. Smith, New 
Words Self Defined, p. 125, where other citations also are given. 
The explanation of this word usually given is that it is a corruption 
of French II n’y a plus. It is possible, however, that the word may be 


164 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Indian in origin and that it was taken to Europe by the American 
army. ‘‘A man killed was nepoed,’’ says Quick, Vandemark’s Folly, 
p. 177, ‘‘a word which many new settlers in Wisconsin got from the 
Indians.” This bit of ‘frontier argot,’”’ he adds, ‘“was rather common 
in the West in the fifties. 'The reappearance in the same sense of 
napoo for death in the armies of the Allies in France is a little sur- 
prising.”” It is to be sure not proved that napoo is a reappearance, 
but this is as probable an explanation as that which derives the word 
from Il n’y a plus. The probable derivation of the United States 
army toast How! Here’s how! from an Indian word has already been 
discussed. For how as an Indian greeting, see the Century Dictionary 
under this word. 

An Indian word meaning fitting, proper, good, and in general having 
the sense of approval, seems formerly to have been current but is now 
lost. It occurs in the New Haven Records, p. 24 (1639), in the account 
of the trial of an Indian, named Nepaupuck. When he was asked 
‘af he would nott confess yt he deserved to dye, he answered, it is 
weregin.”” The word is used in an epitaph on the tombstone of an 
Indian named Uncas, printed in Barber, Connecticut Historical 
Collections, p. 298. According to Hodge, Handbook of American 
Indians, under wauregan, the author of this epitaph was Dr. Elisha 
Tracy. It is as follows: 

‘For beauty, wit, for sterling sense, 
For temper mild, for eloquence, 


For courage bold, for things waureegan, 
He was the glory of Mohegan.”’ 


Another Indian epitaph is given by Thatcher, Indian Biography, 
(1832), I, 294: 
‘*Here lies the body of Sunseeto, 
Own son to Uncas, grandson to Oneko, 


Who were the famous sachems of Moheagan; 
But now they are all dead, I think it is Werheegen.”’ 


A footnote explains Werheegen as ‘‘the Mohegan term for All is well, 
or Good-news.”’ The word survives as a place name in Wauregan, a 
village in Windham County, Conn. 


VOCABULARY 165 


More interesting than these concrete words are phrases of more 
general meaning which have been adopted into current English from 
certain features of Indian life. Among these are on the warpath, the 
pipe of peace, or calumet of peace, to bury the hatchet, to hold a pow-wow, 
Indian summer, Indian yell, to yell like a wild Indian, mugwump, pale 
face, brave (a noun), firewater, run the gauntlet (not originally Indian 
but now usually thought of as an Indian method of punishment and 
torture), Indian file, Indian giving (the giving of gifts afterwards 
recalled), happy hunting grounds, Great Spirit, medicine man, war 
paint, war dance, to scalp (figuratively), to have a person’s scalp, to 
be out for scalps, a ticket-scalper (one who buys and sells tickets, 
especially railway tickets at less than the regular rates), scalp locks, 
to sit around the council fire. 

The following is a list of all the words of Indian origin, exclusive 
of personal, place and other proper names, commented on in Hodge’s 
Handbook of American Indians, that have had at some time or other 
greater or less currency as English words. Many of them are plant, 
fish and animal names, and though unknown to most persons, they 
frequently survive actively in limited localities. Some of the words 
have several different English forms. 


achigan catalpa dahoon 
angakok catawba dockmackie 
apishamore caucus eupishemo 
asimina cayuse eulachen 
assapan chautauqua hens 
atamasco lily chebacco hiaqua 
babiche chebog hickory 
baidarka chickwit hobnuts 
bayou chinquapin hog, quahog 
beshow chipmunk hominy 
bogan chunkey huddoh 
busk cisco humbo 
camas cocash huskanaw 
canoe cockarouse husky 
cantico cohosh iglu 
carcajou coon, raccoon jackash 
caribou coonti kaiak 
cashaw croton (bug) killhog 
cassio berry cultus-cod kinnikinnick 


166 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


kiskitomas 
kiva 
klondike 
kooyah 
kouse 
logan 


longe, lunge, mascalonge, 


etc. 
maccarib 
mahala mats 
maize 
maninose 
manito 
massassauga 
maycock 
maypop 
menhaden 
mescal 
metate 
methy 
mingo 
mishcup 
moccasin 
mocuck 
moonack 
moose 
moosemise 
muckawis 
mugwump 
mummychog 
muskeg 
musquash 
nadowa 
namaycush 
nanticoke 
neeskotting 
neshannock 
neshaw 
netop 
nikie name 
nocake 
nunkom 
occow 
opossum 
otkon 


ouananiche 
oxidaddy 
pappoose 
parka 
pauhagen 
peag 

pecan 
pembina 
pemmican 
persimmon 
peyote 
piasa 
pipsissewa 
pishaug 
pla quemine 
pocan 
pogamoggan 
pogonip 
pogy 

poke 
pokeloken 
pone 
pooquaw 
pooseback 
poquosin 
porgy 
potlatch 
powitch 
powow 
puccoon 
pung 
punkie 
quahog 
quickhatch 
quinnat 
quoddy 
raccoon 
robbiboe 
rockahominy 
rokeag 
runtee 
sachem 
sagakomi 
sagamite 
sagamore 


salal 

samp 
saskatoon 
savoyan 
scuppaug 
scuppernong 
sego 

senega 
sequoia 
sewan 
shaganappi 
shallon 


Shawnee, haw, salad, etc. 


shoepack 
showtl 
siska wet 
skoka 
skoke 
skunk 
slank 
sockeye 
sora 
spanguliken 
spatlum 
squam 


squantersquash 


squantum 
squash 
squaw 
squeteague 
stogie 
succotash 
supawn 
tamal 
tarpon 
tautog 
tawkee 
teepee 
terrapin 
texas 
tipitiwicket 
tipsinah 
titymagg 
tobacco 
toboggan 


VOCABULARY 167 


togue wampapen whisky-john 
tomahawk wampee wickakee 
tom pung wampoose wickiup 
tonkaway root wampum wickup 
toopik wanigan wicopy 
toshence wapacut wigwam 
totem wapiti wigwassing 
touladi wappatoo wishtonwish 
towalt watap wokas 
tuckahoe wauregan woodchuck 
tuckernuck wavey woolyneag 
tulibee weesick yampa 
tump, tumpline wejack yokeag 
tweeg wenona yopon 

tyee whiggiggin yucca 
wahoo whipsiwog 


A survey of vocabulary, such as has been attempted in this chap- 
ter, manifestly can accomplish only a relatively small number of the 
ends which it is desirable to attain in this field of study. In the first 
place, the limits of space make it impossible for such a discussion to 
become exhaustive. Complete inclusiveness would be possible only 
in a dictionary, and the provinces of the dictionary maker and the 
discursive historian are quite separate and distinct. Neither can such 
a discussion be exhaustive of all the main or the minor categories of 
words and shadings in the use of words, which have entered into the 
composition of the American vocabulary. What it can do, however, 
is to suggest some of the main lines of interest and of further investiga- 
tion which may be carried along perhaps in the end to final conclu- 
sions. The greatest need in the study of American vocabulary is a 
more abundant collection of materials, not merely of words, but of 
words with an accompanying commentary of context or circumstance 
which makes their historical significance definitely determinable. 
This need can be satisfied only by systematic reading of the monu- 
ments of American literature. Casual jottings will not get one far, 
nor is the casual method an economical one of gathering the material. 
One has visions of a coéperative undertaking by which this task 
could be accomplished with no impracticable expense of labor. If 
the body of American literature which calls for examination could be 


168 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


gathered under one roof, a kind of Solomon’s House, as indeed it is 
gathered under several roofs, and a body of industrious scholars and 
readers set to work on this literature, aiding and systematizing each 
other’s work by mutual criticism, not many years would be required 
to finish the task in such way as to place it among the permanent 
achievements of human endeavor. When finished, the value of this 
work would consist in the light the history of the vocabulary throws 
on the development of ideas and culture in the life of the people who 
have used the language. That this light would illuminate all the dark 
places of American history could not be expected, but it would 
certainly aid in reading more clearly the hidden and unconscious 
thought of past generations, and would add many instructive and 
amusing moments to the life of our own. 


PROPER NAMES 


In many respects proper names occupy a special position in the 
historical study of language. The personal element enters into their 
formation and preservation more effectively than in common nouns, 
and individual volition, not to say whimsical volition, must often be 
taken into account in the endeavor to explain them. Proper names 
are also on the whole more conservative in form than common nouns, 
the reason being that there often collect about proper names certain 
legal, patriotic, pious and other sentiments which tend to give them 
a fixed form. The proper names with which an unlearned person is 
familiar are likely to be subjected to the crystallizing influences of 
written speech before the words of the ordinary language are reduced 
writing. One of the first things an illiterate person learns to write is 
his own name. Yet again proper names differ from common names 
in that they fall more readily into clearly defined logical categories. 
No great degree of generalizing power is required to divide proper 
names into place names and personal names, and then place names 
into mountain, river and city names, personal names into family 
and given names, and so on through a multitude of obvious classifi- 
cations. This ease of classification tends to give proper names certain 
typical values and to cause them to be repeated in traditional asso- 
ciations. 

The nomenclature of a civilized people is also likely to be much 
more variegated than its vocabulary of common nouns. All nations 
of the modern world are ethnologically mixed, and aliens when they 
enter a new community, if they carry not a stick of furniture with 
them, must at least enter with a name. Inferences as to race may be 
drawn from proper names, though even these may easily be mistaken, 
as Flom points out in detail in his discussion of Norwegian surnames, 


Scandinavian Studies, V, 130 ff., but inferences as to nationality 
169 


170 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


cannot be derived securely from proper names. A person who comes 
from France may bear a German name and may be of German 
origin, but nevertheless may not be German. 

The special interest of proper names in the history of the English 
language in America lies in the unparalleled opportunity afforded 
for the exercise of imagination, ingenuity, sentiment, in providing 
this virgin territory with the human associations of a local and per- 
sonal nomenclature. Never before had a similar opportunity pre- 
sented itself to a civilized people of the western world. With a 
whole continent at its disposal to name and to people, what use did 
the American colonists make of this privilege? Can we find in this 
situation a clear index of the powers of the American mind to rise or 
fail to rise to a great opportunity for the exercise of the creative 
imagination? 

In fact, however, the opportunity was not as unhampered as it 
might seem to be. For the colonization of America was not an in- 
stantaneous process, but complicated and long continued. Nor is it 
conceivable that the colonists at any time thought of themselves as 
selected for the utilization of an unusual imaginative opportunity. 
When they came to settle in America they brought with them the 
same human impulses and associations as had colored their lives 
before migration. They came to America not to exemplify theories, 
but to live. It is therefore unfair to measure American nomen- 
clature by any other tests than those of the practical circumstances 
under which the proper names of the country became established. 
These practical circumstances were very much the same as had 
determined the character of the names traditional in the old homes 
of the colonists. Fine names, even appropriate names, are not the 
exclusive possession of the old world, nor on the other hand are such 
crudities as Meadville or Jonesburg to be met with only in America. 
The esthetic distance between Jonesburg and Peterborough or 
Petrograd is not great, and it is true of all proper names that time 
and conventional association can make any name seem respectable 
or distinguished. If Pitt is a distinguished name, may not Pittsburgh 
be equally distinguished? May not the name also be as closely 


PROPER NAMES (iia 


associated with its place, may it not be as “inevitable,” as Edinburg, 
or Hamburg, or any -ville of France, or any -by, -chester, or -ton of 
England? ‘“‘American local names lend themselves strangely little 
to retention,” lamented Henry James, Notes of a Son and Brother, 
p. 309, “‘I find, if one has happened to deal for long years with almost 
any group of European designations—these latter springing, as it has 
almost always come to seem, straight from the soil where natural 
causes were anciently to root them, each with its rare identity. The 
bite into interest of the borrowed, the imposed, the ‘faked’ label, 
growing but as by a dab of glue on an article of trade, is inevitably 
much less sharp.” All this because Henry James found it hard to 
remember after forty years the name of a convalescent camp for 
soldiers in Rhode Island which he had visited but once, though finally 
the name ‘‘figures” to his memory, ‘‘though with a certain vague- 
ness,’ aS Portsmouth Grove. It is difficult to see how at any time 
or in any country natural causes were able to ‘‘root”? names. Names 
are applied only by agreement and convention, and though natural 
causes may suggest a name, proximity to a view, a mountain, a bay, 
or what not, yet only common acceptance of such a name can root 
itin common use. Names indeed always arise out of common human 
experiences, among which must be counted recollection and memory 
carrying over the name of an old and familiar place to a new and 
strange one. If this is borrowing or faking, mankind has been 
guilty of this misdemeanor in all ages and climes. If the glue which 
attaches a name to its place in America seems thin and lacking in 
adhesiveness, it can be so only because the human associations one 
has here with a place are thin and vague. But to assume that 
all local associations, all personal associations referable to names are 
dull and thin in America is to make one of those broad general charges 
against a race which are always rendered ineffective by their too 
indiscriminate inclusiveness. : 

No general or official method for establishing a fixed form for a 
name that varied in traditional use was available in the United States 
until the establishment of the United States Geographic Board in 
1890. During the time it has existed this Board has made some 


172 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


fifteen thousand decisions. It has besides formulated a set of rea- 
sonable principles to govern its actions in determining names which 
should prove helpful to any one confronted with problems of nomen- 
clature. The decisions of the Board must be accepted by the de- 
partments of the Government as finally authoritative, and though 
their acceptance otherwise is voluntary, the services which the Board 
can render are too manifestly useful to be disregarded. The Board 
has been especially helpful in establishing the names of rivers, moun- 
tains and similar features of the natural landscape. The names of 
such places have almost always become attached to them by more 
or less unanimous but uncritical social consent. Ordinarily the 
names of states or parts of states and towns have been determined 
by legislative enactment or by charter, and have thus by decree 
been fixed from the beginning. Where the fancy has had free play, 
however, in nomenclature, both variety and freakishness have 
entered, and it is much to be regretted that a Geographic Board has 
not been in existence from the beginning of American history. 


Literally it is not true that the American colonists entered a 
country without a traditional nomenclature. The American Indians 
had a local terminology of their own which no doubt was richer in 
certain topographical respects of special importance to persons living 
their nomadic open-air life than was the terminology of their sup- 
planters. In attempting to account for the motives and acts of the 
final name-givers on the American continent, one must therefore 
consider their attitude towards the names which they found in pos- 
session when they arrived, as well as towards the new material which 
they brought with them or gradually developed in the process of 
living. 

In the earlier periods of American colonization, the attitude of 
the colonists towards Indian names seems to have been that such 
names might be retained as designations for natural features of the 
country, for rivers, hills, mountains, lakes and sometimes meadows, 
but that where the creative energy of the settlers themselves was 
prominent and when the name became a matter of official action 


PROPER NAMES 173 


and record, as in the organization of towns and counties, English 
names were much to be preferred. In this the colonists were fol- 
lowing a reasonable desire. Their purpose in leaving England was 
not to make themselves over in the image of the American Indian, 
but rather to transfer to their new homes as much of the feeling and 
atmosphere of the old world as possible. The age of Rousseau and 
romanticism had not yet arrived, but even if it had, the joys of one 
compelled to dwell permanently in a wilderness are likely to contrast 
unfavorably with those of persons who dwell in an older and more 
humanly sanctified civilization. One is not surprised therefore to 
discover that in Massachusetts Colony, of the sixty towns named 
before 1690, not one retained an Indian name, Whitmore, p. 393. 
In Plymouth Colony, two Indian names, Scituate and Monomoy 
(now Chatham) date from this period. It is interesting to observe, 
however, that the Indian name Massachusetts survived, the reason 
being that it was primarily thought of as the name of Massachusetts 
Bay, a feature of the natural landscape. In the same way Con- 
necticut became established as the name of a state because the river 
was so important an element in the experience of the early colonists 
of the state. Massachusetts and Connecticut are the only states 
on the Atlantic seaboard which bear Indian names. 

After Monomoy, or Manamoyet, named in 1678, the next town 
in Massachusetts to be given an Indian name was Natick, in 1763, 
followed by Marshpee, 1763, and Cohasset, 1770. Some Indian 
town names of later origin may be added to these, the town name 
usually having been derived from a feature of the local landscape, 
but the number of such names in Massachusetts has remained sur- 
prisingly small. Sentimental feeling for Indian life has led in recent 
times to the naming of countless camps, cottages, and summer set- 
tlements by Indian names, but the romantic view of the Indian came 
too late to affect the naming of many towns in so old a community as 
Massachusetts. If one takes the United States Official Postal Guide 
and runs down the list of post offices in Massachusetts and a Western 
state like Washington, Idaho or Oregon, one will observe a much 
greater proportion of Indian names in the newer communities than 


174. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


in those longer settled. The settlement of the Western states was 
a more joyous adventure than the settlement of New England. The 
immigrant who went. West did not go forth with dread into an alto- 
gether unknown region. Before he carried his family and his family 
belongings to a new home in the wilderness, he made a preliminary 
scouting expedition, or at least talked with those who had spied out 
the land. Migration westward also took place more rapidly, more 
dramatically and more sociably than the settlement of New Eng- 
land. All these circumstances permitted a play of fancy in light 
matters like finding and giving names such as the New Englander 
could not indulge in. Cooper and other writers of Indian romances 
likewise encouraged a sympathetic feeling towards Indian tradition 
just at the time when western migration was becoming extensive and 
was kindling the American imagination. In other words, the Indian 
became more interesting as he receded in the distance. 

Old Indian town names are still less numerous in Connecticut 
than in Massachusetts. Norwalk, which dates from 1650, bears an 
Indian name. It has been Anglicized, however, in form, so that it 
looks like a compound of north and walk. Madam Knight, Journals 
(1704), speaks of Norowalk ‘‘from its halfe Indian name North- 
walk,” but it is difficult to see that either half of this compound, as 
thus given, is Indian. Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections, p. 
392, says that ‘‘the name of Norwalk is derived from the above 
bargain, viz., the northern bounds of the lands purchased were to 
extend from the sea one day’s ‘north walk’ into the country.”’ This 
bargain is pure legend. Historically the place Norwalk has no con- 
nections which would justify such an interpretation as north-walk, 
and if the name were spelled Norwauk, in harmony with Winni- 
pauk, Montauk, and other names of this phonetic form, current in 
the neighborhood, one would have no doubt of its pure Indian origin. 
Is Norridgewock of the same origin? 

The next Indian town name in Connecticut does not appear until 
1844, when Naugatuck was established, and became, according to 
Dexter, p. 442, ‘“‘the only Indian name besides Norwalk borne by a 
Connecticut town.” It should be remembered that a town in Con- 


PROPER NAMES 175 


necticut is what would be elsewhere more commonly called a town- 
ship. Indian names for lesser divisions than towns, for villages and 
cities, are more numerous, such as Willimantic, Niantic, Montowese, 
Cos Cob, Saugatuck, Pequot, but here also if one will consult the 
United States Official Postal Guide, one will probably find that such 
names are far less numerous in this state than one had expected. 

One of the earliest commendatory references to Indian names 
was that of William Penn, who published in 1683 a general descrip- 
tion of the province of Pennsylvania in the form of a letter to the 
Committee of the Free Society of Traders in London, reprinted in 
Select Notes, London, 1782, Vol. IV, pp. 299-817. Penn says in this 
letter, p. 305, that he understands the language of the Indians, and 
adds, ‘‘I know not a language spoken in Europe, that hath words of 
more sweetness or greatness, in accent or emphasis, than theirs: 
for instance, Octocockon, Rancocas, Oricton, Shak, Marian, Poque- 
sien; all of which are names of places, and have grandeur in them.” 
Perhaps one or two of these names may be traced in later periods, 
there is for example a stream in Pennsylvania called Poquessing, 
which may be Penn’s Poquesien, and a town in New Jersey named 
Rancocas. None, however, has passed into familiar use, and Penn’s 
commendation cannot be taken as indicating a general sympathetic 
interest which led to a custom of retaining Indian names in Pennsyl- 
vania. It is true, however, that a very large number of Indian 
names of rivers and other features of the landscape in Pennsylvania 
and along the shores of the Chesapeake have survived. The reason 
for this may be that these regions were not so rapidly or so thickly 
settled as were Connecticut and Massachusetts, and Indian tradi- 
tions thus had an opportunity to establish themselves, perhaps first 
on printed maps or in printed descriptions of the regions, before they 
were crowded out by the white man’s nomenclature. Certainly it is 
true to this day that mountainous regions, for example, the Adiron- 
dacks or the White Mountains, are likely to contain greater numbers 
of names of Indian origin than adjacent more level and fertile lands. 
Indian names on the whole have been only imperfectly domesticated. 
They still suggest something wild, romantic and grotesque, as they 


176 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


did to James K. Paulding, in his Lay of the Scottish Fiddle, pub- 
lished in 1814. In this poem a voyage up the Chesapeake Bay is 


thus described: 
‘Steady the vessels held their way, 


Coasting along the spacious bay, 
By Hooper’s Strait, Micomico, 
Nantikoke, Chickacomico, 
Dam-quarter, Chum, and Hiwassee, 
Cobequid, Shubamacoddie, 
Piankatank, and Pamunkey.”’ 


So the catalogue continues for a dozen or more lines, bringing in 
proper names from elsewhere in the United States — Chikago, Chick- 
amoggaw and others—‘‘high sounding and poetical names”... . 
‘certainly highly sonorous, and only to be paralleled by a catalogue 
of Russian generals, or Indian chiefs.”” The humorous connotation 
of certain Indian names has always been felt, and names like Hohokus, 
Hoboken, Kalamazoo, Keokuk, Oshkosh, Skaneateles, names of real 
places, have acquired more than local significance, as though they 
were grotesque creations of thefancy. There is, however, no post-office 
named Podunk in the United States Official Postal Guide. Just how 
this word came to be used as the designation for any small, out-of-the- 
way place is not known. It is an Indian word by origin, the name of 
a brook in Connecticut, and a pond in Massachusetts, occurring as 
early as 1687, Hodge, Handbook, II, 270. There is also a Potunk on 
Long Island. 

In Virginia the county occupied a place similar in rank to that 
filled by the town in New England. Here also one notes a reluctance 
to give to the counties any other names than those with distinctively 
English associations, and this is especially true in tide-water Virginia. 
As one goes farther west one meets with a few Indian names, for exam- 
ple, Alleghany, Rappahannock, Shenandoah, names of wonderful 
resonance and of deep emotional content in American experience, 
but the number remains relatively small, and the associations that 
cluster around these names have little to do with the Indians. 

An exhaustive study of Indian place names in all the states would 
carry one far into the details of local history. With the opening of 


PROPER NAMES 177 


Kentucky and the Ohio valley to settlement, the new regions were 
entered by a race of frontiersmen with quite different interests and 
traditions from those of the earlier colonists. The hunting of the 
Indian by this time had come to be regarded with some of the senti- 
ment which attaches to a sport. But whether the Indians were the 
hunted or the hunters they stirred the imagination and excited 
the spirit of adventure. It is not surprising therefore to find that the 
new states bore prevailingly Indian names, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, 
Tennessee, Michigan, Wisconsin, and of course, west of the Mis- 
sissippi, names of this kind are quite as numerous. The name of 
Indiana is a still more direct evidence of sentimental interest in the 
disappearing native population. Towns, villages, counties, and town- 
ships in the western states also bear frequent witness by their names 
to a sympathetic interest in native Indian tradition. Regions in 
which Indians continued to dwell on their reservations after the main 
body of their tribes had gone West, literally or metaphorically, are 
likely to be rich in Indian nomenclature. So in central New York 
a large number of Indian place names, such as Onondaga, Canan- 
daigua, Skaneateles, Schenectady, and hundreds like these, of roman- 
tic or grotesque association as one’s mind inclines, are now in 
familiar use and have become so through direct contact with lingering 
tribes of Mohawks, Iroquois and Senecas. The same applies to the 
eastern end of Long Island, where Indians are still dwelling on their 
reservations. It must be acknowledged that these Indian names 
have been retained not usually from any realization of their appro- 
priateness in meaning to the places they name, but merely because 
they had an imposing or quaint sound. As Beauchamp points out, 
p. 6, Indian place names are rarely poetical when one discovers their 
true etymology, which to be sure is not often known. Tradition in 
this matter, however, is seldom content to abide by the unromantic 
truth, for a high-sounding name with no clear meaning presents an 
irresistible appeal to the creative imagination. The island of Man- 
hattan and the dwellers in it have had such diverse significations 
assigned to their names as ‘‘the island where we all became intoxi- 
cated,’ ‘‘the place where they gather wood to make bows,” ‘‘the 


178 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


people of the whirlpool,” referring to Hellgate, and perhaps most 
reasonably, see Tooker, p. 73, though less picturesquely, ‘‘the people 
of the island of hills.”” None of these meanings was in the mind of 
Irving or Cooper or Walt Whitman when they at different times 
registered their preference for Manhattan over commonplace New 
York. But now that the word Manhattan has been legalized as the 
name of the Borough of Manhattan, it is possible it may become 
colorlessly official and lose some of its romantic glamour. The form 
of the name of the city which Irving preferred and used in his Knicker- 
bocker History was Mannahatta; the name of New York state he 
thought should be Ontario, of the Hudson, the Monhegan, and for 
the United States themselves he preferred Appalachia. Edgar Allan 
Poe also approved Appalachia as the name of the whole country, 
see Brander Matthews, Poetry of Place Names, in Parts of Speech, 
p. 290. Cooper, Notions of the Americans (1828), I, 111, regrets that 
the name Manhattan has not persisted. ‘‘It is a little surprising,” 
he says, ‘“‘that these republicans, who are not guiltless of sundry 
absurd changes in their nomenclature of streets, squares, counties, 
and towns, should have neglected the opportunity of the Revolution, 
not only to deprive the royal family of England of the honour of giving 
a name to both their principal state and principal town, but to restore 
a word so sonorous, and which admits of so many happy variations 
as the appellation of this island.” Practical limits of convenience, 
however, count for a good deal in the matter of place names. It was 
comparatively easy to change King’s College into Columbia College, 
for the name affected only scores, whereas the name of the city and 
state affected thousands. 

Another example of the uncertainty of tradition in the meanings 
attached to the Indian names of places may be cited in the name 
Cohoes, see Masten, History of Cohoes, p. 1, Beauchamp, p. 19, 
20, now a city of some importance in New York state, but un- 
doubtedly the place was first thought to be worthy of a name because 
of the falls in the Mohawk river at that place. Tom Moore, who 
visited the place in 1804, wrote a poem which he called Lines, Written 
at the Cohos, or Falls of the Mohawk River. But it is not so certain that 


PROPER NAMES 179 


Cohoes means falls, and various picturesque etymologies have been 
suggested. The name is now pronounced [’kor’ho:z] with about equal 
stress on the two syllables, but earlier spellings vary and some of 
them bring the word closer to what seems to have been at least 
a related form, the name Coos [’ko:os], which now figures as the name 
of a county in northern New Hampshire, but which originally named 
a natural feature, a bend of the Connecticut river, and was thence 
transferred to the tribe of Indians who lived in that region and 
finally to the region itself. Does Cos Cob in Connecticut contain this 
same Indian word? And Cohasset in Massachusetts? And do we 
have the same word in Cohees, local name for the people who dwell 
in the Valley of Virginia, along the Shenandoah, the people who live 
in higher western Virginia being the Tuckahoes? The word Tuckahoe 
is said to be the name of a wild vegetable eaten by the Indians. But 
all these questions must be left to the scientific student of Indian 
dialects, for surface guessing at answers will not get one far. Douglas- 
Lithgow, in a list of Indian place names in New Hampshire, gives 
Cooés as diminutive of Coa, meaning Pine Tree, being the ‘‘same as 
Coasset, Mass.’’ Started on this career of wild surmise, the author 
then proceeds to connect Coos in New Hampshire, an Indian word, 
with a Coos in Asia Minor, mentioned in Acts, 21, 1, two words of 
the same form but inconceivably related to each other except by the 
coincidence of external similarity. The prime necessity before one 
can venture far in the explaining of Indian place names in America 
is a fuller and better knowledge of the phonology and etymology of 
the American Indian language than has been the possession of any of 
the investigators who have hitherto exercised themselves within this 
field. 

Many Indian names first entered English through French, espe- 
cially along the St. Lawrence and in the region of the Great Lakes. 
Old Kaskaskia also reflects French influence in some of the proper 
names of the region, and all through the northwest, along the Colum- 
bia river to the Pacific, one can still follow the trail of the French 
missionaries by the surviving French and Indian place names. As 
late as the first quarter of the nineteenth century, one still meets with 


180 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


cumbersome French spellings of Indian names in text books and books 
of travel written in English, spellings like Ouisconsin, Ouabasche, 
for Wisconsin, Wabash. This state of affairs was one among others 
that Noah Webster set himself to reform. ‘“‘The advantage of 
familiarizing children to the spelling and pronunciation of American 
names is very obvious,” he remarks, American Spelling Book, Boston, 
1798, p. x, and the attention which he gave to the subject he thought 
must give to his own book “the preference to foreign Spelling Books.” 
Foreign spelling books, in Webster’s use of the term, meant merely 
British spelling books, which usually contained lists of the names of 
British towns, counties and market places, but none for America. 
This deficiency Webster endeavored to supply, and in preparing his 
lists of American place names he gave them in the main the simplified 
rational spellings which they still retain. ‘‘How does an unlettered 
American know,” he asks, American Spelling Book, p. v, ‘“‘the pro- 
nunciation of the names, ouzsconsin or quabasche, in this French dress? 
Would he suspect the pronunciation to be Wisconsin and Wabosh?”’ 
In the Preface to his Elements of Useful Knowledge (1807), Vol. I, 
he commented again on the difficulty of finding out the true pronun- 
ciation of Indian names, and on the necessity of writing them accord- 
ing to ordinary English analogies after their pronunciations were 
determined. In the American Spelling Book (1803) most of the 
proper names appear in the forms which they now commonly have, 
exceptions being Jllenois, Kanhaway, Missorie, Mobill, Sagunau, 
Ashwelot, Chicopy, Lemington, Sunapy, Chicaugo, Shenango, Cha- 
tanuga. 

In some instances, the influence of French spelling and pronun- 
ciation is still observable in the American pronunciation of Indian 
names. Thus such pronunciations as that of Iroquois as [/tra‘kwo1], 
of Illinois as [rlo’nor], of Arkansas as [’arkon’so:], of Sioux as [su:] 
could have established themselves only on the basis of French, not of 
English pronunciation. So also the spelling ch following English 
associations would normally represent the sound [t§] as in change, 
choose, chair, etc. It is of course so pronounced in many Indian 
place names, as in Chicopee or Chatanooga, where, however, the 


PROPER NAMES 181 


analogy of the common English words chick and chat may have oper- 
ated to produce the sound [t§]. More frequently ch in Indian names 
is pronounced [{] as it would be in French. Thus the word Chau- 
tauqua has been normalized in this spelling, though the pronunciation 
varies somewhat between [t{o’to:kwe] and [fo’to:kwe], with perhaps 
the latter as the more common. That this was the older pronuncia- 
tion is made probable by many eighteenth century spellings; De 
Celoron spelled the word Shatacoin and Chatakouin, see Beauchamp, 
pp. 38-40. Other French spellings are Chatacouit, Schatacoin, Chada- 
koins. In Bonnecamp’s journal, 1749, however, it is spelled Tjada- 
kovn and another French spelling is Tchadakoin. These latter spellings 
may have been attempts to record the Indian pronunciation more 
exactly, but the sound ordinarily heard by the French for the letters 
now written ch in Indian words seems to have been unquestionably 
[§]. English analogies would continually work to replace this by 
[t§], so that now Chicago is either [{1’ko:go] or [t{r’ko:go0], and when 
one comes across an unfamiliar name, as perhaps to some persons 
Chenango may be, one might hesitate whether to pronounce the word 
[{r’neengo] or [t{r’engo]. The local pronunciation is of course the 
former of these, and generally as one gets closer to direct tradition 
Indian words spelled with ch will be pronounced [§]. The name 
Ouachita [’wa({r‘to:] in Arkansas, name of a town and college, pre- 
serves three distinctly French features, ou for [w], ch for [§], and a 
for [o:]. The name of a tribe of Montana Indians was Piegan, pre- 
served as the name of a beautiful pass in the Glacier National Park. 
This name is pronounced [pi:’gzen], and both the value of the first 
vowel, [i:] for the spelling ie, and the stressing of the word on the 
second syllable are clear indications of French tradition. The natural 
English spelling would have been something like Peagann. 

Another clear survival of French influence in Indian names is 
to be seen in the pronunciation of a as [91]. Here again later usage 
varies somewhat between [0:] and [a1], the latter being in general the 
sound which a is now supposed to have when it has its Continental 
or Italian value, as contrasted with its ordinary English value, which 
would be [e:] or [ze]. Thus for Chicago one now hears both [{1’ko:go] 


182 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


and [{1’ka:go], for Omaha, one hears both [’o:mo‘ho:] and [’ormo‘ha:], - 
and the second is perhaps commonly regarded as the more refined 
pronunciation. But certainly the pronunciation with [o:] is the 
older and better tradition, and it appears in words with a variety of 
spellings besides a, for example au in Chautauqua, aw in Chickasaw, 
as in Arkansas, augh in Conemaugh. 

In earlier periods of American history, before names had acquired 
fixed and conventional forms, established either by custom or by 
the decisions of the United States Geographic Board, the use of local 
Indian names was often embarrassed by the multitude of forms which 
an Indian name might take. As all Indian names when put down 
in writing were the attempts of the more or less sophisticated writer 
to record the natural sound of the name as he thought he heard it, 
different persons obviously might differ widely in their records. The 
United States Geographic Board, Decisions, 1916-1918, in authorizing 
Egegik as the name of a river in Alaska, rejected the variants Agou- 
yak, Egegak, Igagik, Igiagik, Ougagouk, Ugagik, Ugaguk, and 
Ugiagik. The Cocheco, a river in New Hampshire, had the variants 
Cochechae, Cochechea, Cochecho, Cuttchecho, Kechceachy, Kech- 
eachy, and Quochecho before the Board simplified matters by rec- 
ognizing only Cocheco. For Milwaukee the following spellings are 
recorded by Legler: 

Melleoki —Father Hennepin, 1679 
Millioki —Father Zenobe Membre, 1679 
Meleki —Old French map of 1684 
Milwarik —John Buisson de St. Cosme, October 7, 1699 
Milwacky —Lieut. James Gorrell, September, 1761 
Milwakie —Col. Arent 8. De Peyster, July 4, 1779 
Millewackie—Samuel A. Storrow, September 29, 1817 
Milwahkie —Dr. Jedediah Morse, 1820 
Milwalky —Major Irwin, October 6, 1821 
Milwaukie —The Sentinel, November 30, 1844 
Milwaukee —November 30, 1844, to present time 
These spellings all betray a family resemblance, and the differences 
of pronunciation which they seem to indicate probably lay as much 


PROPER NAMES 183 


in the ears of the white hearers as in the mouths of the Indian speak- 
ers of the name. For Iowa, Hodge’s Handbook of American Indians, 
Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 30, gives sixty-four spellings 
with citations for each. Names like Iowa and Ohio, made up chiefly 
of vowel sound, were particularly hard to reduce to the fixed forms 
of spelling. 


A significant and commendable restraint has always been exer- 
cised in America in giving abstract and allegorical names to places. 
One might have expected names of this kind, so frequently found in 
personal names like Mercy, Charity, Comfort, Content, Hope, 
Faith, Tribulation, etc., to have been abundantly employed by the 
New England colonists in providing names for their new habitations. 
But in fact no such names appear, the name of Providence, in Rhode 
Island, being the exception to prove the rule. The first settlers at 
Dedham in Massachusetts petitioned the General Court that their 
settlement might be named Contentment, but the Court did not 
agree and gave the name Dedham, from a place of the same name in 
England, Dedham Records, III, p. v. In Connecticut likewise no 
abstract names appear until late, when, in 1708, Voluntown was manu- 
factured ‘‘to denote the land granted by the Colony to the volunteer 
soldiers of New London County,” Dexter, p. 440, and when in 1732, 
Union was so named. Neither of these inventions can be charac- 
terized as happy. 

Elsewhere over the country one meets with a sprinkling of Har- 
monies, Unions, Freedoms, Liberties, and similar names. The name 
Freedom occurs in twelve different states, from New Hampshire to 
Wyoming. Fredonia occurs in eleven different states, as does also 
the name Acme. Still more numerous is the name Alma, which 
occurs twenty-one times in as many states. Jra occurs seven times, 
and Amo is the name of a town in Indiana, Amor of one in North 
Dakota, Amoret of one in Missouri, and Amorita of one in Okla- 
homa. An examination of the alphabetical list of post offices in the 
United States Official Postal Guide will reveal a great many similar 
curiosities, but on the whole among the thousands of names in this 


184. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


list these fanciful, sometimes pretentious, sometimes grotesque, 
symbolical names play a small part. They exhibit but little imagi- 
native gift on the part of the inventors of them, and though they are 
usually names of Latin origin, it would not be safe to infer from 
them a high degree of interest in classical scholarship in American 
towns and villages thus designated. Latin seems often to have been 
used to produce that sense of slight removal from reality which satisfies 
in many people the feeling for refinement. There is only one Salt- 
ville in the United States, but a dozen or more Salines and Salinas. 
These Latinized names may be said to belong to the snobbery of 
nomenclature. Sometimes the learning displayed is made doubly 
attractive by being subtly veiled. Thus Montville, in Connecticut, 
was so named with ‘‘a covert reference to the family name of the 
first pastor of the flock, the Rev. James Hillhouse,”’ Dexter, p. 442. 
The oil regions in New York and the Latin word olewm together 
explain the name Olean, in Cattaraugus County, the pronunciation 
of the word as a trisyllable with the stress on the last syllable pretty 
effectually removing the possibility of connecting it with oil. Sev- 
eral of the names of states exhale more or less of the flavor of classical 
scholarship, for example, Vermont, Virginia, the Carolinas, Florida, 
Louisiana, Indiana,and with a Spanish modification, Nevada, Arizona, 
and California, though the ultimate etymology of Californiais not clear. 


If one descends still deeper into the turbid ocean of popular 
American nomenclature of minor features of the landscape, of streets, 
suburbs, and parlor cars, one finds inexhaustible illustrations of simi- 
lar fancy and fantasy in proper names. Even here, however, it must 
be acknowledged that the taste for cheap refinement is exceptional. 
For the most part, people prefer as the names of places or objects 
which figure in their familiar lives what they would consider to be 
good substantial names, not too poetical or too literary. This feeling 
may indeed lead to the opposite extreme in the choice of names which 
make too little effort to escape the commonplace. So there are 
twenty-seven Centervilles in the United States. To these should be 
added twelve Centrals, five Central Citys, ten Centralias, a Centra- 


PROPER NAMES 185 


homa in Oklahoma, a Centropolis in Kansas, and various other com- 
binations of this overworked word in different localities. There are 
also sixteen Enterprises and twenty-five Hurekas in the United 
States. It seems, however, that symbolic allusions, unless they are 
perfectly obvious, as these are, soon tire the popular fancy. When 
Lewis and Clark were ascending the Missouri, it is recorded in their 
journals for Sunday, July 28, 1805, that the Missouri separating into 
three branches, they discontinued the name Missouri and named the 
three branches for President Jefferson, for Madison, then Secretary 
of State, and for Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury. Several 
days later they found the Jefferson branching again, and retaining 
Jefferson as the name of the main branch, they named one of the 
others Wisdom and the second branching of the Jefferson, Philan- 
thropy river, these names being supposedly “‘attributes of that illus- 
trious personage.”’ A third branch was called Philosophy. This 
was a pleasant fancy, though of a kind in which these explorers seldom 
indulged. It is doubtful, however, if it should have been perpetu- 
ated in so permanent a form as nomenclature, and popular custom 
has registered against the names Wisdom, Philanthropy and Philos- 
ophy. The Wisdom is now known as the Big Hole, and this name 
was confirmed by the United States Geographic Board, by a decision 
of April 4, 1917. The Philanthropy had several names, Stinking 
Water, Passamari, and Ruby, the last of these being authorized by 
the United States Geographic Board in a decision of February 7, 
1917. ‘Philosophy River,” writes Mr. C.S. Sloane, secretary to the 
United States Geographic Board, “‘is now the modest Willow Creek, 
ten miles above Three Forks, Montana, on the south bank of Jeffer- 
son River. The United States Geographic Board has never rendered 
any decision in regard to the name for this stream.’”’ The name of 
the Wisdom River still survives as the name of a village, Wisdom, 
in Montana. 


Somewhat similar to symbolical names are Scripture names 
which have acquired generalized abstract meanings. Here again, 
however, one is struck by the extreme restraint of the early American 


186 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


colonists in the employment of such names. One would expect 
Puritan settlements especially to be thickly sown with Bible names. 
In Massachusetts Colony, only one place, Salem, named in 1630, 
was given a Bible name before 1700, and Rehoboth, named in 1645, 
was the only place in Plymouth Colony. Massachusetts shows ‘‘in 
her entire history but three Biblical names in her list of towns,” 
Dexter, p. 4389, the third being Sharon, named in 1765. The list of 
Bible names is somewhat longer in Connecticut, among the older 
towns being Lebanon, Goshen, and Sharon. ‘‘Between 1697 and 
1762, and chiefly towards the latter date, Connecticut named in this 
manner eight of her towns, besides several parts of towns or par- 
ishes. The fact accords with a certain devoutness of temperament 
and familiar recourse to Scripture, not out of place in a generation 
which was stirred to its depths by the revival preaching of Edwards 
and Whitefield,’ Dexter, p. 489. Even so the names were not 
usually given as the result of a popular demand but were assigned 
by the official action of the dignitaries. In the matter of Bible 
names as in that of symbolic names, perhaps the popular feeling is 
the same, the feeling that these names are a little hard to live up to. 
Many of the Bible names now found in various localities were doubt- 
less often given with little realization that they were Bible names. 
Thus there are nineteen Bethels, twelve Bethanys, and about as many 
Sharons and Shilohs in the United States. These names must often 
be merely echoes of older American place names and not distinctly 
referable to the Bible. Names like Gethsemane, however, which 
has been given to two places in the United States, or Jerusalem, 
which also occurs twice, or Ebenezer, which occurs five times, seem 
to indicate a certain kind of acquaintance with the Bible. History 
sometimes plays ironically with these significant names. There are 
seven Bethlehems in the United States, but for none could the name 
be less appropriate than for the smoke-blackened town in Penn- 
sylvania which shares it with the six others. 


Absolute invention seems to have been as rare in proper names 
as in the common words of the language. Many place names can be 


PROPER NAMES 187 


found in the United States which defy explanation, but it will be 
difficult to find one that can be supposed to have been made out of 
whole cloth. Not infrequently names have been made by mechani- 
cally combining parts of other words. Thus Saybrook, in Connecticut, 
is a combination of the names of Viscount Say and Sele and Baron 
Brooke, the two foremost members in a company formed in 1632 to 
settle the valley of the Connecticut, Dexter, p. 423. The town was 
founded and the name given in 1634. The parish of Wintonbury 
in Windsor, Connecticut, ‘‘derived its name, it is said, from the cir- 
cumstance of the parish being formed from three towns, viz., Windsor, 
Farmington, and Simsbury, the name Win-ton-bury being derived 
from a part of the name of each of these three towns,” Barber, 
Connecticut Historical Collections, New Haven, 1836, p. 68. Almost 
any locality could offer further examples of this method of forming 
names. Thus Penmar in Pennsylvania is made up of the first syllable 
of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The place is at the boundary be- 
tween the two states, a kind of location which explains a number of 
State Lines here and there. It explains also Penn Line, Ohioville, 
and Innesville, all towns in Pennsylvania on the boundary between 
Pennsylvania and Ohio. Other names of this kind are Texhoma, 
between Texas and Oklahoma, Texarkana, Mondak, between Mon- 
tana and Dakota, Mexicali and Calexico, Dalworth, between Dallas 
and Ft. North in Texas, Virgilina, between Virginia and Carolina. 
Elberon, in New Jersey, is said to have been formed from the name 
L. B. Brown, who founded the place, and Lake Carasaljo, where Lake- 
wood is situated, is said to have been made up from three names, 
Carrie, Sally and Joe, see Brander Matthews, Parts of Speech, p. 281. 
In the White Mountains, a ravine known as the Jobildunk Ravine, 
according to tradition, derived its name from three natives, Joe, Bill 
and Duncan, who were once lost in it. The village of Penn Yan in 
Gates County, New York, is said by French, Gazeteer of New York, 
p. 720, to have been made up of the first syllables of the words 
Pennsylvania and Yankee because a Pennsylvanian and a Yankee 
were rivals for the honor of naming the place, this composite name 
being accepted as a compromise. Slightly more plausible is the 


188 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


explanation given by Gannett, p. 241, that the name is a compound 
of the names of the two classes of settlers in the town, Pennsylvanians 
and Yankees. Names of this kind are likely to gather about them 
contradictory traditions, but fortunately such frivolities in the 
naming of places have never developed into general habits. The name 
Yreka in California is explained by Gannett, p. 333, as made by read- 
ing ‘‘bakery”’ backwards, yet he explains also that Yreka, a town in 
Siskiyou County, California, was named for an Indian tribe. The 
b in the first explanation seems to be brought down from heaven to 
satisfy the exigencies of the etymology. Both these explanations can- 
not be accepted, and one therefore hopes that the second is the right 
derivation of the name. 

A classical instance of mechanical compounding should be noted 
in the name of Pennsylvania. The credit or blame for this name can- 
not, however, be assigned to William Penn. In a letter to his friend 
Robert Turner, dated the 5th of 1st mo., 1681, printed in Janney’s 
Life, p. 165, Penn remarks that ‘‘this day my country was confirmed 
to me under the great seal of England, with large powers and privi- 
leges, by the name of Pennsylvania, a name the King would give it in 
honour of my father.’’ Penn preferred the name New Wales, and 
when a request that it be so named was refused, he proposed Sylvania, 
‘‘and they added Penn to it.”’ ‘‘And though I opposed it,” continues 
Penn, ‘‘and went to the King to have it struck out and altered, he 
said it was past, and would take it upon him; nor could twenty 
guineas move the under secretary to vary the name; for I feared lest 
it should be looked upon as a vanity in me, and not as a respect in the 
King, as it truly was, to my father, whom he often mentions with 
praise.’”’ 


By far the greater number of place names in America have arisen 
either from an immediate circumstance attending the giving of the 
name, a happening, an object present, a natural feature of the land- 
scape, or from memory association with other places or names. 
Names of.the first kind may be described as casual or accidental. 
Speaking of Indiana about 1820, Carlton, The New Purchase, p. 86, 


PROPER NAMES 189 


says that, “‘out there a settlement usually takes its name from the 
person that first ‘enters the land,’ i.e. buys a tract at the land office. 
Often it takes the name from the family first actually settling or own- 
ing the largest number of acres; and very frequently from the person 
that established a ferry, a smithey, a mill, a tannery, and, above all, 
a Store.”” This statement summarizes some of the most simple and 
obvious ways of naming frontier places. Another would be the 
manufacture of names suggested by the natural situation of the place 
to be named. It is not safe to assume, however, that every Spring- 
field, of which there are twenty-eight in the United States, or every 
Glenwood, of which there are just as many, or every Fairfield, of 
which there are twenty-five, was named as a result of fresh and 
accurate observation of natural surroundings, for these names also 
spread by imitative repetition. Still more common as a determining 
element in naming places has been the presence of some more or less 
striking object at the place and at the moment when it was necessary 
to provide the place with a name. Thus Horseheads, New York, 
a town in Chemung County, was so named because at this place 
‘during the expedition against the Indians, General Sullivan caused 
his pack horses to be killed and the heads piled up,” Gannett, p. 161. 
A post office in Virginia is also called Horse Head, and some score of 
places in the United States seem to have taken their names from the 
presence of horses. No other domestic animal has been so productive 
of proper names, though deer, buffalo, elk, moose, turkeys and other 
game animals have been the occasion of naming many more places 
than the horse. Other names, such as Tomahawk, the name of four 
post offices in the United States, Wagon Wheel Gap and Picket Pin 
Park in Colorado, various Spades, Shoes, Blankets, Arrowheads, 
Grindstones, Flatirons, Fryingpans, etc. are suggestive at least of an 
obvious explanation. There is, however, no post office named 
Dead Man’s Gulch in the United States, and lurid names like this will 
be found more abundantly in fiction than in reality. The name 
Pipe Stave Neck, Southold Records, II, 154 (1712) brings before one 
the picture of a barrel stave on the Long Island beach as vividly as 
the image of the footprint of Friday on Robinson Crusoe’s desert 


190 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


island. Trivial but real things like these have very commonly been 
the sources of names, as they have been obviously the normal experi- 
ences of mankind. 

By far the most common source from which new place names have 
been derived has always been the recollection of the names of old 
places at home with which the settlers in the new regions were 
familiar. This has been true not only for later periods of American 
history, but for the Colonial period as well. Perhaps the most striking 
characteristic of New England place names is the fact that so many 
of them are taken from the names of small and obscure villages in 
England. Thus Haverhill, Hingham, Dedham, Groton, Dorchester, 
Hadley, Waltham, and dozens like these are names almost unknown 
to a Britisher, but of the very pith and marrow of American life 
and history. Each of these names probably ‘‘represents some local 
affection, some individual reason,” and in most instances no doubt 
some original settler in the new town was an emigrant from the 
English village. In Connecticut as well as in Massachusetts, town 
names were freely imported from England. The first town names in 
Connecticut were Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield, and ‘‘out of 
almost exactly one hundred names given public authority to pros- 
pective townships in this state before the Declaration of Independ- 
ence,” says Dexter, p. 423, ‘‘at least fifty seven were taken directly 
from British sources; if I have counted aright, seventeen of the 
remainder were owing to obvious peculiarities of natural location 
(as Waterbury, Middlefield), ten were variations or combinations of 
already existing names (as East Haddam, North Haven), eight were 
of Biblical origin, three were from names of Americans, founders or 
early settlers, two were borrowed from names in the Colony of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, and the remaining three can hardly be classified.’”? In 
1653, the oldest plantation east of the Connecticut river, hitherto 
known by the Indian name of Pequot, was re-named by Governor 
Winthrop as New London, his reason being the “‘commendable prac- 
tice of all the Colonies of these parts, that as this Country hath its 
denomination from our dear Native Country of England, and thence 
is called New England, so the planters, in their first settling of most 


PROPER NAMES 191 


new plantations, have given names to those plantations of some cities 
and towns in England, thereby intending to keep up and leave to 
posterity the memorial of several places of note there, as Boston, 
Hartford, Windsor,” Dexter, p. 429. In the main, however, Ameri- 
can town names derived from the names of the larger English cities, 
or from members of British noble families, or in honor of the king, 
as Lunenburg and Hanover in Massachusetts, will be found to have 
been given by various royal provincial governors and not by the 
people with the intent to memorialize English notabilities or great 
cities. Even in Virginia, where, as Paulding remarks, Letters from 
the South, I, 186, ‘“‘among the high republican names of Jefferson, 
Madison, Monroe and Henry, we are amused to find Prince George 
and Prince Frederick, and innumerable other names that set forth 
the loyalty of the early settlers of Virginia,’’ these names must be 
taken more as evidences of the interests of the gentry who organized 
and managed the Virginia Company than of the rank and file of the 
settlers who actually occupied the land. 

The fond recollection of villages in Old England which is revealed 
by the names which the colonists gave to places in New England 
was duplicated when the New Englander of a later generation, leaving 
his rocky Massachusetts or Connecticut farm for more fertile regions 
in the West, carried with him as much of his native New England 
tradition as he could convey. Thus there are eight Hatfields in the 
United States, six Grotons, five Haverhills, ten Hadleys, four Wor- 
cesters and two Woosters, ten Granvilles besides several Granville 
Centers and a Granville Summit, nineteen Hartfords and twenty-five 
Hanovers. Practically none of these names occur in Southern states, 
and an interesting study of Western migratory movements could be 
made on the evidence of place names. It does not seem that Southern 
names of towns have been productive in the same way. There are 
seventeen Petersburgs in the United States and thirty-one Richmonds 
or combinations of Richmond with other words, but these names 
are so widely and variously distributed that the occurrence of them 
cannot be accounted for on the ground of interest in the two cities 
of Virginia of that name. 


192 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The occasions which led to the naming of countless places in the 
tumultuous expansion of the county westward were so varied that 
they cannot readily be reduced to systematic description. The 
great cities of the world suggested many place names, and Paris, 
London, Berlin, Dresden, Dublin, Rome, Pekin, Tokio, Madrid, and 
other names like these are widely distributed and often grotesquely 
attached to insignificant villages, to places containing only two cats 
and a chimney. Yet here again the more striking fact is that so 
many of American borrowed geographical names suggest intimate 
association with the place from which the borrowed name was taken. 
Thus there is a Mora in Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, 
New Mexico, and Washington, and probably at each place a Swedish 
settler established the name in memory of his old home. In New 
York there is a Dannemora and in Nebraska a Dannebrog. Other 
Scandinavian names like Nysted, Lund, Bergen, etc., were doubtless 
given by persons with direct associations with the older places from 
which the names were taken. Of Hdinburghs and Glasgows there are 
many in the United States, and these names may mean no more, 
so far as personal sentiment was concerned in the giving of them, 
than Delhi, or Pekin, or Cairo. But when one finds a place named 
Leith or Linlithgo, or Dumfries, one is justified in imagining a stray 
bit of genuine Scotch feeling. 

The remote intellectual associations were also the occasion for 
naming many places in America. Probably no president of the 
United States has failed to have some place named in his honor, and 
of Roosevelts, there are fifteen. American generals, statesmen, and 
authors are also generously represented in American nomenclature, 
though perhaps not more so than European dignitaries. There are 
eight Bismarcks and fourteen Gladstones in the United States. There 
is, however, no Wordsworth or no Shakspere on the official list of post 
offices, though there is one Shelley, two Keats, and seventeen 
Byrons. 

An early name of sentimental association was that given to the 
town of Wilkesbarre, in Pennsylvania. The name was made by 
combining the name of John Wilkes with that of Colonel Barre, two 


PROPER NAMES 193 


members of the British parliament who were American sympa- 
thizers at the time of the Revolution. The name was first proposed 
as the name of a Connecticut town in Windham County, but the 
petition was refused. Soon afterward, however, emigrants from 
Windham County to the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Penn- 
sylvania, ‘‘ planted there a living memorial to the incident, by naming, 
in 1775, the still flourishing town of Wilkes-Barre,’ Dexter, p. 434. 


One of the most curious chapters in American place-naming is 
that which relates to the classical names of cities and townships in 
central New York. The names Troy, Rome, Ithaca, Utica and Syra- 
cuse are familiar to every one, but other less known fantastic names 
also occur—Lysander, Scipio, Sempronius, Ulysses, Ilion, Camillus, 
Manlius. These names were assigned to the places thus designated 
in the latter part of the eighteenth century, not all at one fell swoop, 
but over a period of years. On June 17, 1819, Halleck and Drake 
published in the Evening Post, as one of the Croaker Papers, An Ode 
to Simeon De Witt, Esquire, republished in the first complete edi- 
tion, New York, 1860, pp. 69-72, with an editor’s note on p. 163. 
In this poem DeWitt was ridiculed as the ‘‘ God-father of the christn’d 
West” and as the originator of these fantastic names. De Witt was 
Surveyor General of the State of New York from 1784 to the year 
of his death, 1834. In a prefatory note, p. 69, the authors of the 
poem explain that ‘‘When the Western District was surveyed, the 
power of naming the townships was entrusted to the Surveyor- 
General. Finding the Indian appellations too sonorous and poet- 
ical, and that his own ear was not altogether adapted for the musical 
combination of syllables, this gentleman hit upon a plan, which for 
laughable absurdity has never been paralleled, except by the ‘Phi- 
losophy’ and ‘Big Little Dry’ system of Lewis and Clark. It was 
no other than selecting from Lempriére and the British Plutarch 
the great names which those works commemorate. This plan he 
executed with the most ridiculous fidelity, and reared for himself 
an everlasting monument of pedantry and folly.” The editors of 
the complete edition of the Croakers, who are not named, added a 


194 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


note on p. 163, in which they remark that ‘‘allusion is made in this 
poem, to the names applied to the twenty-eight townships in the 
Military Tract of Central and Western New York,” and that though 
De Witt has often been spoken of as entitled to the honor of giving 
these names, that honor, ‘‘such as it is, is believed to belong to 
Robert Harper, then Deputy Secretary of State.’”’ The note also 
quoted a direct statement from De Witt, in which he explains how 
the names were given. ‘The names,” he says, ‘‘were given by 
formal resolution of the Commissioners of the Land Office. The 
Board, consisting of the Governor, the Secretary of State, the Treas- 
urer, the Auditor and the Attorney General, held its meetings in the 
city of New York. The Surveyor General had his office established 
by law in the city of Albany, and knew nothing of these obnoxious 
names till they were officially communicated to him, nor had he even 
then, any agency in suggesting them.” A similar defense of the 
memory of De Witt is made in a Eulogium, Albany, 1835, delivered 
by T. Romeyn Beck, shortly after the death of the Surveyor Gen- 
eral. ‘‘Let not then this charge be again brought against him,” 
says Beck, ‘‘as through ignorance alone I have even heard it since 
his death.’”’ This makes too much of the matter. There may have 
been some question of the good taste of these names at the time 
they were given, but they were never disgraceful, and long use has 
made them less ridiculous than they may have seemed when they 
were new. One may even be grateful for this added touch of color 
upon the American map. The story of the origin of the names 
makes it clear, however, that they do not reflect an unusual interest 
in classical antiquity among the backwoodsmen of Central New York 
in the early nineteenth century. The settlers indeed were the vic- 
tims, not the creators of the names. The names were evidently first 
applied on paper, and then later, when a group of settlers wished to 
incorporate, they found that they were already tagged with names, 
Cato or Camillus or Sempronius, names doubtless which seemed to 
them just like any other names. 

The evidence fixing the personal responsibility for these names 
upon Robert Harper, Deputy Secretary of State, is lacking. He may 


PROPER NAMES 195 


indeed have been merely a scapegoat, and as one attempts to enter 
into the inner history of this matter, one realizes that a hundred years 
ago, even as now, public officials were skilled in that practice known 
as “passing the buck.” A certain amount of information on the 
point is contained in the Historical Magazine, Vol. III, pp. 53-54, 
New York, 1859. The author of this article, whose name is not 
given, exonerates De Witt, and he cites the formal action of the 
Commissioners of the Land Office at the meeting in 1790 at which 
the townships already formed in the so-called Military Tract of the 
State were numbered and designated by the names Lysander, Han- 
nibal, Cato, Brutus, Camillus, Cicero, Manlius, Aurelius, Marcellus, 
Pompey, Romulus, Scipio, Sempronius, Tully, Fabius, Ovid, Milton, 
Locke, Homer, Solon, Hector, Ulysses, Dryden, Virgil and Cincin- 
natus. The persons present at this meeting were Governor George 
Clinton, Secretary Lewis A. Scott, Treasurer Gerard Bancker, and 
Auditor Centenius. The name Centenius is corrected, p. 128, to 
Curtenius. At later meetings other townships were given similar 
names, the same commissioners being present. Just which one of 
the commissioners was responsible for the names is not apparent, 
though in the circumstances it is obvious that the finger of suspicion 
points steadily in the direction of one who bears so strange a Latin- 
ized name as Curtenius. The documentary information contained in 
this article from the Historical Magazine is confirmed by the later 
independent study of the records, published by Paltsits, state his- 
torian of New York, in the Magazine of History, XIII, 246-249, the 
only difference being that the name of the auditor as correctly given 
by Paltsits is Curtenius, not Centenius. Apparently the matter 
can be carried no farther, and the impelling motives in the mind 
of Curtenius or whoever it was who gave the names remain un- 
known. 

It should be noted that Seneca, the name of a county and a village 
in Central New York, and by extension, of various other places in 
the United States, is not to be included among these names of classi- 
cal origin. The word is a corruption of an Indian name, Sinnekaas, 
as it is given by Gannett, p. 279, but extant in various other forms 


196 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


in seventeenth-century records. In the Dutch maps of 1614 and 
1616 the name already appears in the form Senecas, and the term 
seems first to have gained currency among the Dutch as an Indian 
tribal name, see Beauchamp, p. 204. 


An interesting chapter in the consideration of American local 
names is that which treats of the obscurations which some of them 
have undergone. This obscuration may affect merely the spelling, 
as when Worcester in Massachusetts, derived from a British name 
of the same form, becomes Wooster in Arkansas and Ohio, or when - 
Gloucester, which appears four or five times in the United States, 
becomes Gloster in Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. On the 
other hand, change in place names may affect pronunciation, often 
radically, without affecting at least conventional spelling, as when 
in England Banff is pronounced as though it were written Bamf, 
and Tottenham as though there were no e and no h in the word. 
The causes of these obscurations, which probably are found in all 
languages, are not difficult to discover. Proper names by their 
nature are often the most intimate and common words that pass 
current in the life of a community. The name of the place one lives 
in is on one’s tongue, at least in one’s mind, more frequently than 
is any other word, more frequently than words applied to the weather. 
Thus communities frequently develop abbreviated or familiar pet 
names for their local habitation, speaking of it as the Burg, or the 
Old Town, or Little Old New York, or St. Joe instead of St. Joseph, 
or Schenec instead of Schenectady. In other words, proper names 
in common use belong to the very familiar vocabulary of the lan- 
guage. But they may also belong to the formal vocabulary, es- 
pecially when they are used in official and documentary writings. 
One often finds, consequently, two forms of the same name, one 
colloquial, the other traditional and official. The conflict between 
these two names when it comes to a question of survival would 
naturally be decided by the particular circumstances, colloquial or 
official, which determine the associations of the name. It is obvious, 
however, that in the transmission of British names to America, col- 


PROPER NAMES 197 


loquial interests must often have predominated, since the emigrants 
who settled villages frequently neither cared for nor were instructed 
in official literary traditions. A further occasion for colloquial per- 
versions of proper names also arises when names originally of alien 
origin pass current in an English community. Examples of these 
are numerous French and Dutch names in common use in America. 
Doubtless the same obscuration and corruption has taken place in 
Indian names, though unfortunately no Indians are left to laugh at 
the ludicrous things which the English have done with their names. 
Numerous illustrations of the first of these processes can be found in 
the American vocabulary of proper names derived from English 
sources. When in 1677 the town of Burlington, in New Jersey, was 
founded, the settlers came in two bodies, one from London, the other 
from Yorkshire, forming, however, a united township, named after 
the Yorkshire town of Bridlington. The form which this name 
took, and which it has always maintained, was, however, the col- 
loquial and not the official form of the name of the Yorkshire town, 
see Doyle, English Colonies, IV, 305. So in Connecticut the name 
Killingworth is by origin a colloquial form of Kenilworth, in War- 
wickshire, where the pronunciation Killingworth still survives, Dex- 
ter, p. 431. The original petition for the town in 1667 spells the name 
Kenelmeworth, but this petition was written by John Woodbridge, 
minister of the parish, who represented a learned minority, probably 
of one, in the community. Pomfret in Connecticut is likewise a 
colloquial form of Pontefract, in Yorkshire, Windham is from W ymond- 
ham on the east coast of England, and Simsbury from Simondsbury 
in Dorsetshire, see Dexter, pp. 432-3. The name of Willington in 
Connecticut was derived from a village in Somersetshire, preserved 
in its more official form in the title of the Duke of Wellington. There 
is also a Willington in South Carolina. Of course the popular pro- 
nunciations were not always the surviving forms of the names. Thus 
Chelmsford, in Massachusetts, was spelled, and doubtless at the time 
pronounced Chamesford, in the Groton Records, p. 117 (1697), and 
Jamestown in its first syllable was often spelled and pronounced 
Jeames-. Both of these popular forms have now disappeared. 


198 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Dutch proper names which have been transformed into something 
that looks like English are found at various places in New York and 
New Jersey. Thus Dutch Zandt Hoek, Vlacht Bos and Helle Gat 
have become Sandy Hook, Flatbush, and Hell Gate. Likewise Beeren’s 
Island has become Barren Island, Deutel Bay has become Turtle Bay, 
and Conyer’s Island has become Coney Island, Doyle, English Colo- 
nies, V, 24. The process of obscuration is well illustrated by a Dutch 
place name in lower New York. Coenties Slip was so named because 
the land in the vicinity was the property of Conraet Ten Eyck, 
nicknamed Coentje, or with 7 for 7, Coentie. ‘‘This name, pro- 
nounced Coonty, was next called Coonchy, then Quinchy, and is 
now often called by dock-men, Quincey,” Alice Morse Earle, ‘‘The 
Stadt Huys of New Amsterdam,” in Historic New York, I, 45. Many 
other Dutch names underwent similar changes. Brooklyn is from 
Breuckelen, near Utrecht, and Wallabout in Brooklyn also illustrates 
the workings of popular etymology. Brooklyn in Connecticut is an 
entirely separate word, being originally Brook-line, like the town in 
Massachusetts, Dexter, p. 488. Stone Arabia, in Montgomery 
County, New York, is conjectured by Carpenter, p. 66, to be an 
anglicization of Dutch steenraapje, the first element of which means 
stone, the second element, turnipfield. Direct evidence is lacking, 
however, and the name Arabia Petrea, which would have been 
familiar to students of the Bible, suggests at least the possibility of 
a different explanation. Many Dutch names which were formerly 
current have now passed out of use. Thus Maiden Lane was for- 
merly Smit’s V’lei, or Smith’s Valley, from a blacksmith’s shop that 
stood there. This was shortened into The V’lez, and then corrupted 
into Fly. The first public market sheds were erected in New York 
at this place and were called The Fly Market, Hill and Waring, ‘‘Old 
Wells and Water Courses of the Island of Manhattan,” in Historic 
New York, I, 202. The name persisted well into the nineteenth 
century, and Halleck, Poems, p. 271, says 


‘“‘No thief in Fly-Market, just caught in a robbery, 
Could raise such a clatter of blackguards and boys.” 


PROPER NAMES 199 


The word was used as an English word as early as 1675, for in North 
and South Hempstead Town Records, I, 301, we read of ‘‘the Lott of 
John Ellisons which Lys in the fly.” It is given by Carpenter, p. 62, 
in the forms vly, fly, vley, vlei, vlaie, a swamp, a marsh, shallow pond, 
from Dutch, vallez, valley, but with no citations. A complete study 
of Dutch local terminology is much to be desired. 

French names are found widely distributed throughout the States, 
though naturally they are more frequent in the neighborhood of older 
French settlements than elsewhere. They are found along the border 
between Canada and the United States, in Old Kaskaskia, and very 
abundantly in Louisiana. The obscurations which many of them 
have undergone are of the kind which would naturally affect all foreign 
words. Thus Bois Blanc, an island near Detroit, has become Bob 
Low, and Terre Haute in Indiana becomes Anglicized into ['terthat] 
or [’tera hat]; Mownt Desert in Maine is pronounced like the English 
word desert, or with educated speakers who are aware of the French 
association of the name, it may retain a slight French quality and be 
pronounced with stress on the final syllable, like dessert. Translation 
and popular etymology sometimes work together to produce strange 
modifications of foreign names. Thus Burnt Coat, a name traditional 
on Swan’s Island, Maine, is French Céte Brulé, or Burnt Coast. The 
word brulé with the Anglicized pronunciation brooly is still commonly 
current in Canada and on the border in the sense of a grassy meadow 
in the woods, these meadows having been made by the Indians who 
burnt them over regularly to keep the forest from crowding out the 
grass and blueberry bushes. 

In passing it may be noted that a river and place in Oregon 
bearing the name Willamette do not, as the appearance of the name 
indicates, owe their name to a French model. The word is stressed 
on the second and not on the third syllable and is said to be of Indian 
origin, see Gannett, p. 325. In spelling, however, it seems to have 
come under the influence of French. The United States Geographic 
Board, Fourth Report, p. 282, passed upon this name, establishing 
Willamette as the authorized form and rejecting the variants Oualla- 
met, Wahlahmath, Williamette. No tears need be shed over the dis- 


200 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


appearance of the last of the variants, but one may regret that the 
first two must be rejected. The spelling ow is of course merely the 
traditional French spelling for w in Indian names. The Board in 
authorizing Willamette and rejecting the other forms of the name 
was no doubt following its general principle of accepting established 
local custom, when custom was established, even if the custom was 
contrary to etymology. Following this principle, the Board has 
refrained from restoring Pysht, village and river in Washington, to 
Pysche, rejecting also the variants Fish, Pisht, and Pyscht; or Ozan 
in Arkansas to Aux dnes; or Low Freight to L’eau frais. The princi- 
ple is sound, though one may regret the loss of the historical forms 
of the names. The character of a name is not to be determined by its 
etymological origin, however, but by the form which it takes in actual 
use. 


This process of obscuration which has been illustrated in place 
names is exemplified still more abundantly in personal names. If 
familiarity does not breed contempt in the use of personal names, it 
certainly leads to the neglect of niceties of pronunciation which 
formal style would more fully preserve. Here again British family 
names, like Cholmondeley ['t§aml1], Marjoribanks ['ma:t{‘beeyks], etc., 
have often been cited to arouse an American smile over the grotesque 
contrast between the aural and the visual forms of the names. 
Manifestly such a pronunciation as Chumley for Cholmondeley 
could only become established in a community use of the name on 
a level in which the spoken associations of language were much more 
numerous and important than the printed or written associations. 
If one has never signed one’s name and has no notions how it should 
appear to the eye, one is not likely to be much troubled by any pro- 
nunciation of it, or to make any effort to restrain changes in the pro- 
nunciation of it. As one becomes more learned, however, one may 
appeal to tradition to establish the historical form of one’s name, or 
what is more commonly the case, having arrived at a literary stage 
of culture, one merely gives literary form to one’s name in such 
fashion as will echo the auditory form which the name has at that 


PROPER NAMES 201 


moment. These processes are abundantly illustrated in the records 
of American personal names. In the Plymouth Records, I, 18, occurs 
the name Southwood, though the usual spelling of the name of the 
person here referred to is Southworth; but the editor of these records 
remarks, p. xi, that ‘“‘the pronunciation of Southworth at the present 
day as a Christian name is almost always in accordance with the 
Southwood spelling, which disappeared from the records at a very 
early date.”’ In these records one also finds the name Murdock 
written Murdow, Mordow, Murdo, see I, 201. The name Shurtleff 
is Shirtley, I, 33, and Shurtley, I, 178. For Brinsmead, the form 
Brinsme occurs, I, 77, and so frequently elsewhere that there can be 
no doubt that the final consonant was ordinarily omitted in conver- 
sational use in the seventeenth century. The spelling Holums for 
Holmes, I, 20, indicates clearly enough a dissyllabic pronunciation 
of the name. In the Dedham Records, Everett and Prescott are often 
spelled Euered and Prescod, the final consonant being voiced in a 
relaxed pronunciation. 

The proper name which now commonly appears in the forms 
Briscoe, Briscow, Bristow, had a great variety of spellings in the 
Watertown Records, all showing that the r was not pronounced, e.g. 
Bisco, p. 12 (1647), and also Biscoo, Bysco, Bisko, and occasionally 
with r, as in Brysko, p. 21 (1650). In the same records Parson 
appears as Passen, p. 19 (1649), and also as Passam, Passon. For 
Parkhurst one finds Parkhust, p. 44 (1655), and Parkis, p. 136 (1678). 
For Barsham occurs Bassum, p. 45 (1655), also Barsum, Bersham. 
For Barnard occurs Barnad, p. 87 (1666), and so often. Final conso- 
nants are frequently omitted in these records, as in Arnall, p. 11 
(1647), and often, for Arnold; Line, p. 77 (1663), for Lynde?; Hollon, 
p. 1138 (1672), for Holland; Garfill, p.128 (1676), and often, for Garfield; 
Townsin, p. 118 (1673), for Townsend. For Pickering occurs the 
spelling Pickram, p. 79 (1663). The development of Pickering into 
Pickram, which probably is the same name as Pegram, a present Vir- 
ginian family name and current also in other communities, would be 
similar to that which gives grogram from gros grain, and megrim 
from migraine. The pronunciation Pickerin would of course be 


202 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


common in colloquial use. The change of a final n to m is also 
illustrated in the common popular pronunciation of rosin as rozum, 
as in R. M. Johnston’s Mr. Billingslea, p. 186 and elsewhere, where 
the word is spelled rawsom. 

For Pendleton, Pembleton occurs in the Watertown Records, p. 1 
(1634), and though no example of this change has been observed, 
the form Pemberton is probably a still further modification of Pemble- 
ton. In the Watertown Records one finds a great variety of spellings 
for Chenery, e.g., Ginnery, Ginnrie, Gennry, and others recorded in 
the index to these records. For Simon, a form with final ¢, Szmont, 
occurs, p. 22 (1651), and often. A final ¢t is added after fin proft for 
proof, p. 83 (1664), in these records by a similar phonetic process. 

In the Norwalk Records occur a number of interesting variants of 
proper names. For St. John occurs Sention, p. 17 (1655), Senchion, 
p. 20 (1656), and Senszon, p. 55 (1668). Undoubtedly the name was 
pronounced at this time as if written Senchion. This pronunciation 
persists as the name of a street in Norwalk. Longstreet, Georgia 
Scenes, p. 85, says that the name St. John ‘‘was always pronounced 
‘Sinjin’ by the common people” about the year 1790 in Georgia. 
The pronunciation of this name in America has now been completely 
normalized by the spelling, though the older popular pronunciation 
still persists in England. Similar to this word is the name Sé. Clazr, 
now widely distributed in the form Sinclair, and current in the Ken- 
tucky mountains in a further corruption giving Slinker. In the 
Norwalk Records occurs also Seamer, p. 17 (1655), for Seymour; 
Raiment, p. 18 (1655), for Raymond; Rithard, p. 32 (1650), and so 
often, for Richard; Haite, p. 45 (1655), for Hoyt; Beldin, p. 86 (1694), 
and also often Belden, for Belding; Griggorie, p. 17 (1655), and often 
for Gregory. Grenwich is given as Grenwig, p. 58 (1670), meaning 
[’gren‘wid3], but the name of the place is now uniformly [’gri:n‘wit']. 
The place now known as Rowayton [ro’e:ton] is spelled Rowerton, p. 
93 (697). 

A proper name now spelled Hough is sometimes pronounced as 
though spelled Hoff and sometimes as though spelled Howe. Both 
pronunciations are historical and are recorded in early spellings, 


PROPER NAMES 203 


Thus in the New Haven Records, p. 33 (1639), the name is spelled both 
Hoff and Hough. In the Hanover Records, p. 151 (1797), it is spelled 
Houghf. A word of parallel phonetic form is the poetic and archaic 
enow, a variant of the standard enough. In the New Haven Records, 
p. 97 (1643), one finds Wintrop for Winthrop, the exchange of [t] for 
[0] being not uncommon in the seventeenth century. The given 
name Arthur is Arter in the Huntington Records, p. 206. 

Another name formerly spelled in a variety of ways which 
have now come to be regarded as altogether different names is the 
name variously spelled as Hobart, Huburt, Hubord, Hubbard, and 
other forms to be found in the index of the Groton Records. So also 
one finds in the Huntington Records, Ingersoll, Inkersol, Inkerson as 
variants of the name now most commonly Ingersoll. In these records 
one also finds Wickes, Weeks, Weicks and similar variant spellings 
for the name which has now settled down into two names, 
Wickes and Weeks. The same variants in spelling occur in the 
North and South Hempstead Records. In the Huntington Records, 
Conklin and Conkling are used interchangeably, Sticklen, Sticklan 
and Strickland, Kecham and Kicham, for numerous examples of all 
of which, consult the index to the records. Is the name, Kecham, 
Kicham merely a variant form of Kitchen, like Pickering, Pickerin 
becoming Pickram, Pegram? 

In the North and South Hempstead Records a large number of old 
forms of proper names are recorded. For Valentine occurs Valling- 
tyne, I, 16 (1657), and elsewhere often; a rounded form of the vowel, 
spelled Vol—, also occurs, see index, an example of which in London 
English of the latter fifteenth century is cited by Wyld, History of 
Modern Colloquial English, p. 94. The proper name Weeks, Wickes 
is variously spelled, and the common noun also appears as weeckes, I, 
22 (1657), or weatke, I, 23 (1657), or weacke, I, 24 (1657). Strickline 
appears as Stickline, I, 21 (1657), and Stickling, I, 22 (1657). Brutnall 
appears often as Brudnell, I, 24 (1657), or Brudnill, I, 53 (1658). 
Chadderton appears as: Charterton, I, 18 (1657), and Carterton, I, 25 
(1657). The name De Mott occurs in a curious variety of forms, 
Dement, Dremant, Demont and Demynt, see index under De Mott. 


204 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The name Scadding appears as Scadden, Scaddin, and various 
other similar spellings, but also as Schadden, I, 54 (1658), where the 
sch is merely a Dutch spelling for sc, sk, as in Schuylkill, etc. So also 
the name Scott appears as Schott, I, 63 (1658). For Champion vari- 
ous spellings occur, Champin, Champean, Champien, and once Cha- 
min, I, 171 (1665), and it is probable that these names indicate a 
pronunciation with stress on the last syllable [t\zem/‘piin], which per- 
sists in popular speech as a pronunciation for the common noun 
champion. The ending -ing appears in the weakened form in a great 
many names, e.g., Seryin, Serrin, etc., for Searing; Genen, Jennens, 
etc., for Jennings; Burlin for Burling, Lattin for Latting (or is this 
the reverse process?), Linenton for Linnington, etc. In 1666 Mrs. 
Washburn sold to Rope Warnull, I, 227, a bay horse; Rope Warnull 
seems to be of the same family as one who signed himself Wandell 
in a document of 1659, and the pronunciation of this name to which 
the spelling Warnull points, is simply [’warmel]. As for the given 
name Rope one wonders whether the editor has not misread this for 
Rafe, a form of Ralph which occurs, I, 334 (1674), and in the spelling 
Reaph, I, 241 (1667). The family name Rope or Ropes does not 
occur in these records. ‘The spelling Rafe appears a number of times 
in the records, and Rafe Shepherd figures in the Dedham Records, III, 
22 (1636). In Hempstead Records, I, 241 (1667), Reaph Hall is men- 
tioned and I, 334 (1674), occurs the name Rafe Keler. In these 
records, I, 93 (1660), Walter is spelled Water, a form of Walter from 
which the abbreviation Wat would be derived. The name of Nathan 
Birdsall appears in the possessive form as Berdshals, North and South 
Hempstead Records, 1, 205 (1679), and this spelling makes it probable 
that Benjamin Berchsell and Stephen Birchsell were members of the 
same family. The change of s to sh is also illustrated in Mashinger, 
I, 192 (1665), a name more commonly spelled Messenger. In other 
words the change occurs in witneshth, I, 167 (1665), wittnesh, I, 172 
(1665), for witnesseth, witness, in parshall, I, 249 (1668), for parcel, 
a general sound change discussed in the chapter on pronunciation 
under [{s]. The name Cornwall appears commonly either in this 
form oras Cornwell, but also as Cornell, the several forms sometimes 


PROPER NAMES 205 


being written in the same page, as on I, 214 (1665). The full form 
of a name spelled Minthorne also appears as Minttorne or Mentorne, 
from which it would be but a short step to the commonly current 
form Minturn. The name Ogden is written Ocktdin, I, 176 (1665), 
though on the same page it is also written Ogden. On p. 263 (1669), 
one finds Osbond and Osbon for the name more conventionally spelled 
Osborn or Osburn. When two spellings like these stand side by side, 
obviously the less formal spelling is more significant for pronunciation 
than the official spelling. Many other interesting variants of 
proper names could be cited from these records, but perhaps enough 
have been mentioned to show that a genealogist must also be a 
linguist and phonetician. 

Most of the examples cited above have been taken from New 
England town records, but similar modifications of proper names 
took place in other regions. Green, Word Book, pp. 13-16, gives a 
long list of Virginia names spelled one way and pronounced another. 
Among these may be noted Armistead, pronounced Umsted, Boswell 
pronounced Bosell, Boulward pronounced Boler, Burwell pronounced 
Burel, Callowhill pronounced Carroll, Crenshaw pronounced Granger, 
Gawin pronounced Goin, Higginson pronounced Hickersom, Jenkins 
pronounced Jinkins, Norsworthy pronounced Nazary, Sinclair pro- 
nounced Sinkler, Wyatt pronounced Wait, and many others. 

A few given names may be noted as they are given in the North 
and South Hempstead Records. For Robert occurs Robord, I, 16 (1657), 
and frequently. For Henry a trisyllabic pronunciation was popu- 
lar, as in the spelling Hinery, I, 18 (1657), and often. For Benjamin 
the spelling Beniamyne, I, 21 (1657), indicates a final syllable with 
a long vowel. For James, Jeames is common. For Samuel the 
spelling Samivell, I, 21 (1657), I, 31 (1658), indicates a pronunciation 
which later generations were to know only as a humorous one. The 
name is spelled Samiwell in the Groton Records, p. 70 (1680), and so 
often. Daniel is very frequently Dannel throughout the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. Walter in the form Water, North and 
South Hempstead Records, I, 93 (1660), was of course the necessary 
antecedent to the abbreviation Wat. Rafe for Ralph has already 


206 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


been mentioned; the given names Repe, I, 188, and Rope, I, 227, in 
these records one is inclined to take as misreadings of the manuscript 
for Rafe. A strange name is that of After Albertus, mentioned twice, 
I, 118 (1659), and I, 453 (1683). 


The word goody as a title of address, said to survive in America 
only as applied to a caretaker in Harvard dormitories, is used not 
infrequently in the records, as when, in 1682, the town of Hempstead 
voted, I, 411, “‘that the towne will satisfie the docter coper for the cuer 
he did for gooddy bats of our town which is thre pound and har diat 
while she was at oyster bay which is five and thirty shilins.”” The 
corresponding goodman is also used, though neither is general, and 
apparently the terms were not considered highly honorable in the 
usage of the community, perhaps connoting age and indigence. The 
meaning of forms of address in general during the American colonial 
period call for much more detailed study than they have received. 
It is not quite clear on what grounds the title Master, or Mr., Mis- 
tress or Mrs. was given to some persons and withheld from others 
in the early town records. Both were evidently titles of distinction, 
since they were not freely applied. Very commonly a descriptive 
appellation is put down after a man’s name, and when this appella- 
tion is flax-dresser, or cordwainer, or carpenter, or mariner, or some 
similar trade name, its meaning is clear. Some uncertainty attaches, 
however, to the names for the most common of the occupations of 
colonial America, that of tilling the land. The term yeoman is fre- 
quently found in town records down into the eighteenth century. 
Yet beside it will also be found the terms planter and farmer, the 
three differentiated in a way which perhaps was vitally important in 
the social communities in which the term passes current but which 
now escapes us. 

The distinction between Mzss and Mrs. was formerly not so 
clearly established as it nowis. In the Hanover Records, p. 66 (1786), 
and elsewhere several times a widow is referred to as Miss Cleavland, 
though she is usually designated as Mrs. Cleavland, as at p. 48 (1785). 
Noah Webster, writing in 1790, found it necessary to warn his fellow 


PROPER NAMES 207 


Americans that ‘‘the use of Miss for Mistress in this country is a 
gross impropriety. The word Mistress (or Madam to an old lady) 
should always be applied to a married lady, and Miss to one who has 
never been married,” see Thornton, under Miss. Cooper, Pioneers, 
Chap. X, satirizes this use in the character of Remarkable Pettibone, 
a transplanted New England woman in Central New York, who 
would call all unmarried women only by their first names, even the 
daughter of the magnificent Marmaduke Temple. For this Marma- 
duke rebukes her sternly. ‘‘Do tell!’ exclaimed Remarkable, a 
little aghast, ‘well, who ever heerd of a young woman’s being called 
Miss? If the Judge had a wife now, I shouldn’t think of calling her 
anything but Miss Temple; but ” “Having nothing but a 
daughter, you will observe that style to her, if you please, in future,” 
interrupted Marmaduke. But the custom was not merely a down- 
east peculiarity. Thornton gives an example from Georgia, 1840, 
and Miss for Mrs., or in the South Miz for Mrs., can still be heard 
in popular English almost anywhere. 

Somewhat similar to these popular obscurations of native names 
are those modifications which foreign personal names are likely to 
undergo when they pass current in American communities. In these 
circumstances, however, the social disconnection between foreigner 
and native is greater than it is among the members of an unmixed 
community, and occasion is thus offered for the operation of more 
thoroughgoing changes and also for the exercise of conscious intention 
in bringing about change in a way which would scarcely arise in a 
homogeneous native community. Before the period of immigration 
in the nineteenth century, the chief mixed communities in the coun- 
try were those made up of French and English elements, of Dutch 
and English in the Central States, of German and English in Central 
New York, in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North and South Caro- 
lina. Interesting studies could and should be made of the family 
and given names which passed current in these several groups. It 
is true that these studies would be concerned primarily with what 
has happened to French and German and Dutch names. But in 
fact most of these older foreign names no longer seem foreign. They 


208 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


have been as thoroughly incorporated into the American conscious- 
ness as were the numerous French names which entered English after 
the Norman Conquest. Even the persons who bear the names, 
unless they are genealogists or etymologists, often cannot tell, after 
a period of several generations, whether their names are native or 
foreign. Could one guess, for example, that Krehbiel and Graybill 
are the same name, that Kiihle and Keeley are the same, Stehli and 
Staley, Lehn and Lane, Végelin and Fagley, and dozens of others 
which have undergone a sea change, perhaps slight in form but great 
in social significance. 

In general, there are three ways, as is pointed out by Kuhns, 
German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania, p. 242, in 
which these foreign names may change. For one, they may be 
merely translated, as when Lebengut becomes Livingood, Zimmer- 
mann becomes Carpenter, Fuchs becomes Fox, Schmidt becomes 
Smith. Sometimes only part of a name may be translated, as in 
Wannemacher becoming Wanamaker. The second kind of change is 
that which may be described as transliteration. This change may 
not be very great so far as the sound of the name is concerned, but 
the difference in the appeal to the eye apparently connotes a very 
great difference in feeling with respect to the name. ‘Thus Rice and 
Reis would be pronounced alike, but they look different and are felt 
to be different. The same applies to Staley and Stehli, Amwake 
and Amweg, Coon and Kuhn, Keeney and Kuehne, Keeley and Kuehle, 
Miller and Mueller, and many similar names. A third kind of 
change is that in which a general similarity to an English name tends 
to bring the foreign name to the same form as the English by ana- 
logical imitation. Examples of this cited by Kuhns, p. 246, are 
Roesch becoming Rush, Roth becoming Rhoades, Reichert becoming 
Richards. Many other examples are given by Kuhns, Studies in 
Pennsylvania German Family Names, Americana Germanica, IV, 
299-341 (1902). 

The examples cited above have all been taken from Pennsylvania 
German, but various other communities would offer many similar 
illustrations. Dutch, French and Flemish names have been studied 


PROPER NAMES 209 


by Dunlap, A Tragedy of Surnames, in Dialect Notes, IV, 7-8, as 
they now appear in a rural region of Southern Kentucky. Here we 
find that Guzzot has become Cossett, Gossett, Cozart, and Cozatt; Ver- 
milyea has become Vermillion; Petit has become Poteet; Des Champs 
is Scomp, De La Haye is Dillehay. Examples of Teutonic names are 
Van Huys becoming Vannice, Zinkern becoming Sinkhorn, Van 
Arsdale becoming Vanarsdell, Vanasdell, Vanarsdall, Vanarsdzll, 
Vannersdale, and Wzttnacht becoming Whiteneck. The stages through 
which French Pett passed until it reached American Poteet are given 
by Joel Chandler Harris, Mingo (1884), p. 40. The name started, 
declares Harris, with the landing of Gérard Petit on the coast of 
South Carolina. But Gérard soon migrated to the mountains of 
north Georgia, where his name became Jerd Poteet. ‘‘He made 
such protest as he might. He brought his patriotism to bear upon 
the emergency, and named his eldest son Huguenin Petit. How 
long this contest between hospitality on the one hand and family 
pride and patriotism on the other was kept up, it is unnecessary to 
inquire. It is enough to say that the Huguenin of one generation 
left Hugue Poteet as his son and heir; Hugue left Hague, and this 
Hague, or a succeeding one, by some mysterious development of 
fate, left Teague Poteet.’’ Meanwhile members of the family had 
been carried along by a stream of migration into Alabama, where 
some of the Petits became Pettys and Pettzses. 

Two Frenchmen, Pierre Lacroix and Napoleon B. Bouchard, 
settled in Iowa about 1850, Quick, Vandemark’s Folly, p. 371, and 
the American natives ‘‘called the one Pete Lackwire and the other 
Poly Busher. They were the only French people who came into the 
township.”” The changes here illustrated took place in the main 
on distinctly popular levels of speech, with very little or no inter- 
ference on the part of the persons to whom the names intimately 
belonged. Manifestly, however, when two social groups, one rela- 
tively high, the other relatively low, dwell in more or less harmony, 
the matter of personal names is likely to occasion some conscious 
reflection, some heartburning, and some more or less ingenious ma- 
nipulation. The change of Klein to Small or Inttle could scarcely take 


210 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


place without some assistance on the part of the persons who pos- 
sessed the name. Attempts to Americanize names are continually 
taking place in polyglot communities, and a useful study might be 
made of all cases of this kind which have come up for legal decision. 
Frequently the change is merely for convenience to reduce a long 
name to a shorter form, as when the Finn drops off an -ainen ending, 
or a Russian amputates a -wich or a -witz. Difficult sound combina- 
tions are also frequently simplified, especially in Polish and Slavonic 
names. Or again, the name may be altered to evade too intimate 
association with a contemned social order, as when the Jewish Gins- 
burg becomes the more distinguished Gainsburgh, perhaps preparatory 
to a further flight into Gainsborough, or Grtinthal becomes Gruntle, or 
Steinfeld becomes Stonefield. Sometimes distinction is made to reside 
merely in the change of quality in a sound, as when the frequent end- 
ing -stein is pronounced -steen, or Reis becomes not simply Rice, but 
Rees, Reece, Reese. The study of similar Jewish proper names is car- 
ried further by Mencken, pp. 268-300. The question whether one 
shall approve or disapprove personal interference with the forms of 
proper names is complicated by the mingling of social with linguistic 
considerations. In the main, the linguist could scarcely look with 
favor upon individual tampering with elements in the language which 
are the common social possession of all. Proper names, however, are 
in a peculiar sense the possession of the persons who must bear them 
from their cradles to their graves. No one is more intimately con- 
cerned in the form of a proper name than the person whom it desig- 
nates. It would seem, therefore, that the owner of a name might be 
thought to have peculiar privileges with respect to it, even perhaps 
to the extent of making himself an absurdity by foolishly altering 
it. If on the other hand an alteration results in a positive gain, 
in social comfort, in social sympathy and intelligibility, it is difficult 
to see how such a change can be regarded otherwise than as com- 
mendable. 

A modification of traditional pronunciation which in certain 
instances has taken on conscious aristocratic coloring is the stressing 
of the final syllable in dissyllabic names which ordinarily and histori- 


PROPER NAMES 211 


cally should have initial stress. A good example of this is Littell, 
a form of Little. The pronunciation Littell has now been so long 
established in the language that it can scarcely be said to be an 
affectation, and in origin it is not probable that it was an affectation 
at all. It probably arose through a fairly heavy stressing of the final 
syllable in [ittle, i.e. [/It‘tel] becoming [l1’tel]. One may still hear a 
similar pronunciation in New England, towel, Lowell, for example, 
being pronounced [’tav‘el], [’lo:‘el]. And it should not be forgotten 
that if Littell is an occasionally surviving dialectal pronunciation of 
little, the ordinary standard pronunciation is much more frequently 
represented in the proper name Little. Many early spellings make 
this explanation of the origin of proper names with stress on the 
second syllable seem altogether probable. Thus in the Southold 
Records one of the names occurring most frequently is Tuthill. Only 
a fairly heavy stress on the second element of this name could prevent 
it from becoming Tuttle, a form which it no doubt often took. So 
also we find in the records the name Dibell, II, 481 (1707), Debell, II, 
219 (1710), which perhaps may look more familiar in the form Dibble. 
One finds also Terrell, besides Turril, Turrel, IJ, 164 (1699), and II, 
93 (1700), Fawsett. In the Hempstead Records, the name of Robert 
Beadle appears in a variety of forms, such as robord beadille, I, 16 
(1657), robord Bedell, I, 19 (1657). In these records, I, 366 (1670) 
we find a reference to Mr. oDle, who is elsewhere more recognizably 
mentioned as Mr. Odell, I, 16 (1659). The author has found no evi- 
dence to indicate that Odell is a corruption of Woodhull, as it is fre- 
quently said to be. Perhaps it is the same as Udall which in turn is 
a corruption of Uvedale. One cannot be quite sure how heavy a stress 
names like Odell, Bedell, Dibell, etc. had in the seventeenth century. 
It is quite probable that pronunciations with stress on the first or 
on the second syllable existed side by side, perhaps at the same time 
and in the same community. As spelling and social custom in these 
respects became more conventionally established, however, the names 
probably separated into what were felt to be two quite distinct names, 
for example, Beadle and Bedell, Dibble and Dibell, or Dobell. So far 
as the writer is aware, the pronunciation Odell is the only one that 


212 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


survives for that name, but a pronunciation with stress on the first 
syllable is remembered historically in some families bearing the name. 
Spelling undoubtedly has greatly assisted the tendency towards 
heavy stressing of the final syllable when it ended in two consonants, 
as now in Birrell, often pronounced with final stress in America, but 
with initial stress in England. So also Burnett is more likely to have 
final stress than Burnet, Bennett than Bennet, Gillett than Gillet. 
In Furness a stress on the final syllable may differentiate the word 
from furnace, and in Bottome from bottom. In Cornell, Purcell, Purnell 
the same tendency would be present as in Birrell. In Farrar, Gerard, 
Millard and many similar names with unexpected stress on the 
second syllable a certain amount of conscious direction has probably 
been present. 


Fashion has changed also in the matter of the number of given 
names which a well-provided person ought to have. Nowadays 
practically all persons in America have two given names. In a total 
of six hundred names taken distributively from four different letters 
of Who’s Who in America, 1920, 80+ per cent have two given names, 
17+ per cent have only one given name, and 2+ per cent carry 
three or more names before their family names. In the last group, 
however, a number are married women who thus preserve their 
maiden names after marriage. The proportions according to British 
custom are different, but probably not as widely different as one 
would expect. In the British Who’s Who, 1920, excluding members 
of the nobility who commonly have numerous names, and excluding 
also foreigners, but otherwise covering a body of detail equivalent to 
that examined in Who’s Who in America, 63+ per cent have two 
given names, 22+ per cent have one given name, and 13+ per cent 
have three or more given names, though rarely more than three. 
Of course, no private citizen among the names examined can equal 
the present Prince of Wales, whose names in full are Edward Albert 
Christian George Andrew Patrick David. 

All this wealth of display in personal terminology contrasts sharply 
with the simplicity of an earlier day. Throughout the seventeenth 


PROPER NAMES 213 


and eighteenth centuries it was extremely rare for a person to bear 
more than one given name. Among the early American presidents, 
John Quincy Adams obviously acquired his middle name to distin- 
guish him from the second president, but otherwise the early presi- 
dents were all commonly designated with only one name. Bowditch, 
Suffolk Surnames, p. 11, quotes from Britaine’s Remaines, of the date 
1614, the remark that ‘“‘two Christian names are rare in England: 
and I only remember now his majesty, who was named Charles 
James; as the prince, his sonne, Henry Frederic; and among private 
men, Thomas Maria Wingfield and Sir Thomas Posthumus Hobby.” 
But Maria and Posthumus as names of men are manifestly freakish, 
as the giving of two names at this time would be in any case. In 
the colonial records in America a single Christian name is universal 
in communities of English origin. In the Hempstead Records, I, 410 
(1682), the two names of Matthias Johnson Boockout, by their number 
as well as their character, prove him to have been a Dutchman. The 
difficulties sometimes occasioned by this custom of giving only one 
name are well illustrated in the North and South Hempstead Town 
Records, in which the name of John Smith appears very frequently, 
the Smith family being large in this community and having an un- 
fortunate fondness for the name John. Some relief was afforded by 
amplifying John into Jonathan, and by adding Junior or Senior to 
the son’s or to the father’s name, but these devices were inadequate 
to care for all the John Smiths. In this pressing difficulty alone, in 
these records, middle names appear, and one reads of John Nan 
Smith, John Rock Smith, John Blue Smith. Neither the name 
Rock nor the name Blue occurs as a family name in these records, 
and doubtless the common nouns rock and blue were used as proper 
names through some locally intelligible association. John Nan Smith 
probably derived his middle name from his mother. He is frequently 
referred to as John Smith Nan’s, and generally some uncertainty 
seems to have been felt where to place the second given name of a 
man who was blessed with such an abundance. The particular Nan 
who may have been the mother of John Nan Smith is not explicitly 
on record, but not improbably it was that Nan, who was sufficiently 


214 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


known in seventeenth-century Hempstead circles to give its name 
to Mad Nan’s Neck. 

The time at which the fashion of giving two names became preva- 
lent in America can be determined, though the causes of this change 
in fashion are not so clear. ‘‘From the catalogue of Harvard,” says 
Bowditch, Suffolk Surnames, p. 11, “it will be found, that, during 
more than one hundred years, there were but six graduates who had 
two Christian names. By the catalogue of 1859-60, it appears, 
that, of 431 students, 77 have one name, while 354 have two or more. 
The catalogue of Williams College gives a similar result; viz., of 240 
students, 37 have one name, while 203 have two or more.”” The six 
persons with two given names mentioned above and their dates are 
Ammi Ruhamel Corlet, 1670, Brocklebank Samuel Coffin, 1718, 
Ammi Ruhamel Cutter, 1725, Robert Eliot Gerrish, 1730, William 
Blair Townsend, 1741, and Edward Augustus Holyoke, 1746. The 
first three of these seem to have owed their names to something 
special and perhaps fantastic. Between 1746 and 1859, however, the 
fashion of giving two names was definitely established. The middle 
stage of the development may be inferred from the statistics deriva- 
ble from the catalogue of Bristol College, 1834-5, in Bucks County, 
Pennsylvania. In this catalogue 99 students are listed, 70 with more 
than one given name, 29 with only one name. Among the students, 
the new generation, the fashion by 1834 had overwhelmingly estab- 
lished itself. The list of trustees and professors contains 41 names, 
of which 22 had only one given name, and 19 had more than one, the 
older generation thus looking back as one might expect, to the dis- 
appearing fashion of an earlier day. 

The roll of the presidents of the United States is illustrative of 
these changes in fashion. The first president to bear two names was 
the second Adams, and the next was William Henry Harrison. Fol- 
lowing Harrison came John Tyler, and after Tyler, James K. Polk, 
who was inaugurated in 1845. Polk’s middle name seems to have 
been commonly indicated merely by the letter K., as it still is 
in the traditional way of reciting the list of the presidents. One 
says John Quincy Adams and William Henry Harrison, but 


PROPER NAMES 215 


James K. Polk. This gave rise to the opinion that the K. in 
this name was not an abbreviation, but merely the letter of the 
alphabet, mechanically inserted to distinguish one James Polk 
from another. This statement was made in the Historical Magazine 
(1857), I, 25, and other examples are given, I, 51, IT, 364, III, 91, of 
middle names which were supposedly merely letters of the alphabet 
or initials. In actual fact Polk’s middle name was Knox and the 
opinion that K. was merely a letter of the alphabet seemed credible 
only because middle names were relatively uncommon, and middle 
initials still less common. British critics of America have not in- 
frequently called attention to initial names in America as one of the 
evidences of a crude and mechanical social life, like the naming of 
streets by means of letters of the alphabet or numbers. By origin 
the custom probably was mechanical, the abbreviated name being 
intended mainly for the eye and not for the ear. Long use has made 
of it, however, a familiar spoken practice in the United States, and 
many persons are known to fame only by the initials of their 
given names. After James K. Polk, came Taylor, Fillmore, Pearce, 
Buchanan, Lincoln and Johnson, all with only one given name. 
The next four, however, Grant, Hayes, Garfield and Arthur, all had 
two names, the second being customarily indicated only by an initial. 
Among the remaining presidents only Taft and Harding have made 
use of a middle name and perhaps one may infer from this fact that 
preference is again veering in favor of but one given name. 

The statistics to be derived from the Catalogue of the Officers and 
Graduates of Yale University present a similar picture in fuller detail. 
In the years 1702-1720, eighty-eight students were graduated, but 
none of them had middle names. In the years 1721-1775 the total 
number of graduates with more than one given name is forty-nine, 
an average of less than one for each class. Of these forty-nine, 
thirty-seven have family names for middle names, the others have 
the ordinary names, John, Samuel, Abraham, Andrew, Henry, etc. 
Several are Dutch names, like Hendrick Hans Hansen (1742), Peter 
Van Brugh Livingston (1731), John Cornelius Cuyler (1748), and 
several must reflect unusual family traditions, like Ammi Ruhamel 


216 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Robbins (1760) and Samuel Still Augustus Baker (1772). The sta- 
tistics for the years 1776-1800 can best be given in tabular form. 


Class. With mid- Total in 
year dle name the class 
DT Td tosh did btsis ac © sR CML a ee 2 33 
i Wy i ff {RAR IM a oR Pia NEES 6 56 
UE 78s ha he Sees GOR 1 40 
1770 ii ce nls Coho ea hte ee Pee ee 4 34 
T7SO se ee ante dele cee eens Dan ates eg eee 3 27 
11V ¢:4 ora ORere RRR AAT eh NIA SRR YAR: 4) 3 27 
|W pI a RRM RG lee el a PU 4 26 
LZSS 24S. SRILA Ae CO Doe rf 42 
TZ BAS hie sta ae eee pa ee ee 6 52 
L7SB Ys Dae adie ik 5 hee hae eee opie irae ene 13 70 
LY fs) PER ER Aree Lea ean te he. i: | 13 51 
WE: 7 CMG PEMA UG UME Sat CRUE Den YL 4 6 58 
VSS EP de aah te eae peated hae eet eae 5 34 
6-3 Een pee tTod md bat Lerana ge MNBL I! = 6 30 
T79G Pe aaa lh ckaleeie cel dane aie eae 8 24 
L7G Le Re RAGA RR, ates Sen 3 27 
1792 276 ee CEN ELE, Seis eae ere eee 6 34 
LOB sais Sis cal oO CRU te et 10 38 
iW GLY Ss eae ee angen mee al yp ORS he lh 2h oo 8 22 
PTO eis Gis be wien ie ER ey ne Oe 6 33 
UT OB eh S ei ete PU Bee tne 6 34 
LOT Baie eclale y selele oh R hielael ie Ae ae 5 37 
DOB yin aah os woe kU ao 4 21 
MF OD Toe sc tara tere tos UR ie eho tial ie eae fe een ie cae 6 26 
TROON a he BOS Le 4 36 


From 1800 on the number of graduates with middle names 
increases rapidly, and for the year 1830, of a total of seventy, forty- 
eight, or 68.5 per cent have middle names. ‘The class of 1900 num- 
bered 316, of which 273, or 86.5 per cent had middle names, and the 
same proportions hold for later classes. Of the forty-eight with 
middle names in the class of 1830, seven have middle names like John, 
William, etc., the middle names of the others are family names. Of 
the 273 in the class of 1900 with middle names, 70 have middle names 
like John, William, etc., and 203 have middle names that are the 
names of families. Of course a general name like John, William, etc., 


PROPER NAMES 217 


may be in effect a family name, being given to a child to establish 
or to continue a tradition in relation to some other member of the 
family. 

The reasons for these changes of fashion do not lie on the surface. 
It is true that Continental Europeans had the custom of giving two 
or more Christian names long before the English. In Catholic 
countries this custom reflected the desire to honor several saints 
at one time, or perhaps to secure their favor. It does not appear, 
however, that either the English or Americans were under foreign 
influence when at the end of the eighteenth century and the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century the custom of giving two names 
became prevalent. In the early records one finds that persons of 
Dutch origin in America occasionally have two names. In the 
Names of Foreigners who took the Oath of Allegiance to the Province 
and State of Pennsylvania, 1727-1775, edited by Egle, Harrisburg, 
1892, a list of over twenty thousand names, mostly German and 
Swiss, one again finds a considerable number of persons who had 
two given names. These however are but echoes of the Continental 
custom and cannot be shown to have influenced American social 
conventions. Much more probably the introduction of the custom 
of giving two names was a part of the general expansion of social 
activity which characterized the latter eighteenth century and the 
early nineteenth century. The social world then became larger, 
more varied, more flamboyant than it had been before. The emer- 
gence of new families through increased commercial and _ political 
opportunity was one of the striking features of the new life. It is 
not improbable that the custom of giving two names instead of the 
simpler village custom of giving only one was a part of this new 
worldliness, of a new pride of family. To some extent the circle 
has now been completed, and double names being the almost uni- 
versal custom, distinction is now sometimes supposed to reside in 
the older simplicity. But in the early nineteenth century in Amer- 
ica, grandiosity was in the air. In Home as Found, 1838, Cooper 
has an American character named Bragg, whom he treats with scant 
sympathy. This youth called upon a lady, and “when Eve received 


218 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


the card from Pierre and read aloud, with the tone of surprise that 
the name would be apt to excite in a novice in the art of American 
nomenclature, the words ‘Aristabulus Bragg,’ her cousin began to 
laugh,’’ Chap. I. But Cooper’s own preferences seem a little amus- 
ing now. For him Pierre was a perfectly good name for an American 
hero, and his finest gentleman must be feathered with so fine a name 
as Marmaduke Temple. 


Certain elements of playfulness and fancy have entered into the 
spirit of American nomenclature. A nickname is etymologically an 
eke-name, that is an also-name or additional name. It is not merely 
a diminutive, as when John becomes Jack. When Jack becomes 
Jack the Giant-killer we have the addition of a real nickname. In 
certain uses the nickname might supplant the real name, and Jack 
might be called simply Giant-killer. Americans have been particularly 
fond of giving names of this type, especially to their political heroes. 
Sometimes the names were affectionate and familiar, as in Old Hick- 
ory or the Old Roman for Jackson, Old Rough and Ready or Old 
Zack for Zachary Taylor, Old Tip for General Harrison, of Tippe- 
canoe fame, Old Abe and Honest Old Abe for Lincoln, Old Buck for 
Buchanan, Old Chapultepec for General Winfield Scott, see Thorn- 
ton, II, 622 ff. Names of this kind readily pass into oblivion, and 
perhaps one needs a note, which Thornton provides, to remind one 
that the Ashland Dictator, the Sage of Ashland, was Henry Clay, 
that the Little Giant was Stephen A. Douglas, that the Plumed 
Knight was James G. Blaine. Research in the campaign literature 
of earlier days reveals many similar nicknames, for example, those 
centering about the War of 1812, which have been collected by 
Albert Matthews, American Antiquarian Society, XIX, pp. 23 ff., 
and it would also emphasize the fact that this fashion seems to have 
gone the way of torchlight processions and barbecues and the other 
picturesque features of older political campaigning. Even the tra- 
dition of the great Roosevelt, a popular idol if there ever was one, 
has not crystallized in a popular synonym, and during the past few 
years Wilson and Harding and Coolidge, the three political figures 


PROPER NAMES 219 


most prominently before the public eye, have been merely Wilson, 
Harding, and Coolidge and nothing more. 

As eponyms for the American people as a whole various imagina- 
tive figures have from time to time remained permanently and uni- 
versally known, Brother Jonathan, Uncle Sam, and the dubious term 
Yankee. The ultimate origin of the name Jonathan in this kind of 
familiar symbolic application has been commonly supposed to be 
2 Samuel, I, 26, in the lamentation of David for Saul and Jonathan: 
“T am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast 
thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love 
of women.” It is assumed that the name Jonathan first passed into 
rather frequent use as a familiar and friendly term of address between 
persons. Washington is thus supposed to have addressed Jonathan 
Trumbull, governor of Connecticut, to whom he frequently applied 
for advice, as Brother Jonathan. The name then came to be used 
to designate specifically a New Englander, and finally, like Yankee, 
a citizen of the United States. The progression here indicated is not 
improbable, although in this as in most instances of folklore, one 
cannot point one’s finger to a decisive and dramatic moment when 
the tradition became established. Certainly the name Jonathan 
was very common in eighteenth-century New England, and Jona- 
than Postfree, a character in a comedy of 1806, occupies a typical 
position. Yet perhaps after all too much has been made of the 
Biblical associations of Jonathan. The obvious fact is that the name 
Brother Jonathan is a necessary complement to John Bull. Now 
if one seeks a name to put beside John Bull, would any name suggest 
itself more readily than Jonathan? The earliest example of Jona- 
than meaning explicitly a citizen of the United States in the New 
English Dictionary is for the year 1816. The earliest example of 
Brother Jonathan in this sense in Thornton is for 1815, of Jonathan 
without the brother is for 1816. The most plausible supposition is 
that the term Brother Jonathan or Jonathan came into popular 
use during the period of strong feeling and excitement of the War 
of 1812, and that Brother Jonathan was created merely as an antago- 
nist to John Bull, the central figure on the stage. 


220 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The genealogy of Uncle Sam is involved in as much obscurity 
as that of Brother Jonathan. It is commonly said that the name 
was derived from a facetious and familiar manner of alluding to 
Samuel Wilson, an army contractor and inspector who lived at 
Troy at the time of the War of 1812. In an admirable article, 
entitled Uncle Sam, in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian 
Society, New Series, XIX, 21-65, also pp. 250-252 (1908), Albert 
Matthews has proved as positively as one can hope ever to prove 
such things, that the name had nothing to do with Samuel Wilson, 
and that it was merely a jocular, and at first perhaps derisive, ex- 
pansion of U. S., the abbreviation for United States, which was 
stamped on articles and supplies for use in the army, that it arose 
during the War of 1812, and as one would expect, along the Canadian 
border where the war was most actively fought. 

For the name Yankee, no conclusive etymology has been discov- 
ered, though many have been suggested and have been summarized 
by Sonneck, pp. 838-95. It is often said to have been derived from 
Dutch Jancke, or Jankin, but the chain of evidence is incomplete. 
The same must be said of the derivation from an Indian pronuncia- 
tion of the name of the English, generally represented as Yengeese. 
Whatever its origin, the name was already current, as Thornton’s 
citations show, at the beginning of the American Revolution. It 
meant, as it still does in American use, primarily a native of New 
England. The meaning has been extended, however, so that it 
often means merely northern as contrasted with southern. But as 
the terms northern and southern are not precise but vague geo- 
graphical terms, so one finds the term Yankee used with varying 
docal significance. No one knows where the West begins, neither 
does any one know where the North or the South begins. Relative 
to Richmond, New Yorkers are Yankees, but relative to Hartford, 
they are not. And if one gets far enough away to reduce in the 
perspective of distance all American distinctions to insignificance, as 
the Englishman often succeeds in doing, then Americans of both 
North and South, of East and West are Yankees. A study of the 
three score citations illustrating the use of this word which have been 


PROPER NAMES 221 


collected by Thornton, will show further that the term has not only 
geographical but also moral significance. A Yankee trick need not 
necessarily be the act of one who comes from New England, nor are 
all New Englanders, as one need scarcely add, capable of Yankee 
tricks. 

A term of less extended geographical application than Yankee 
but not of less fervid emotional content is Dixie. Commonly now 
it is taken to mean the South in general, and is supposed to have 
some connection with Mason and Dixon’s Line. A more probable 
explanation, see Century Cyclopedia of Names, under Dixie, Dixie’s 
Land, is that which derives it from a man named Dixie. In the 
phrase Dixie’s Land, meaning a kind of lost earthly paradise, the 
name is said to have passed current among the negroes, and gradu- 
ally to have been accepted generally in southern song and verse as 
the poetical or affectionate name for that region. Much of the 
success of the term is obviously due to the stirring melody to which 
the song Dixie is sung. It is interesting to note that the word did 
not become widely current until the time of the Civil War, Thorn- 
ton’s first citation being for 1863, and that like other similar terms, 
it owed its extended use to the passions and excitements of a great 
national upheaval. 

The South is not the only section of the country which rejoices 
in the possession of a poetical and affectionate name to supplement 
its literal name. Probably every state in the Union has its second 
name, always useful in song and oratory, and sometimes popularly 
familiar. Sometimes the name is derived from a natural feature, as 
in the pseudonym Granite State for New Hampshire, or Bay. State 


for Massachusetts, or Prairie State for Illinois. Sometimes it is. 


merely an affectionate diminutive, as in Little Rhody, or Kentuck, 
Old Kentuck, or merely Jersey for New Jersey. Keystone State as 
applied to Pennsylvania arose from the fact that Pennsylvania was 
the seventh among the thirteen original colonies, the key-stone of 
the Union. Perhaps New York may be said to have chosen the name 
Empire State by right of eminent domain. Its characteristic, or 
supposedly characteristic, natural product sometimes gives a nick- 


™ 


222 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


name to a state, as in Palmetto State for South Carolina, Sunflower 
State for Kansas, Buckeye State for Ohio. A number of second 
names of states are apparently of zodlogical origin, as in Badger for 
Wisconsin, Wolverine for Michigan, Sucker for Illinois, Gopher for 
Minnesota, Hawkeye for Iowa, Buckskin for a Virginian. The 
explanation of the origins of these names, however, does not lie on 
the surface. With respect to Badger, Quick, Vandemark’s Folly, 
p. 105, remarks that it came from a mining region, ‘‘ where lead had 
been dug for many years, and where the men lived who dug the 
holes and were called Badgers, thus giving the people of Wisconsin 
their nickname, as distinguished from the Illinois people, who came 
up the rivers to work in the spring, and went back in the fall, and 
were therefore named after a migratory fish and called Suckers.” 
Some of these names have now only an historical interest and have 
passed out of popular use. Many of them seem to have arisen 
during the time of western expansion in the middle decades of the 
nineteenth century, and they were thus a part of the general pic- 
turesque and humorous turmoil of that period. A Kentuckian to- 
day would not appropriately be called a Corn Cracker or a Red 
Horse, or a Missourian a Puke. The Hoosiers of Indiana, however, 
have retained their name and made it a badge of distinction. Despite 
much ingenious speculation, this name still defies precise explana- 
tion. Thornton’s earliest example is for 1833, when it appears full 
fledged, doubtless having come into general use during the western 
migration of that period. It is probably an old British dialectal 
word which has received special applications in America, see Pub- 
lications of the Indiana Historical Society, Vol. IV, No. 2, and the 
Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History for June, 1911. 

The names of some states recall interesting chapters in American 
history. Thus Kentucky, which possesses an unusual share of nick- 
names, is called the Dark and Bloody Ground, because within that 
state many tribal hostilities among northern and southern American 
Indians were fought out. Texas is the Lone Star State still in spite 
of the fact that she has been annexed to the other states. Virginia 
has been the Mother of Presidents, though this term also is probably 


PROPER NAMES 223 


doomed since it seems to take away honor from Ohio. Another 
name for Virginia is the Old Dominion. As applied to Virginia, the 
word dominion is a survival from an earlier and more general use. 
In Canada the name Dominion of Canada is of recent origin, the coun- 
try having been thus legally named and constructed out of several 
provinces by an act of 1867. During the colonial period of American 
history, however, the term dominion passed generally current. ‘‘ Do- 
minion in New England,” says Peters, General History of Connecti- 
cut, p. 41, note, “‘signifies a sovereign, independent state, uncontroll- 
able by any other earthly power.’ Peters speaks of the dominion of 
New Haven, of Hartford, etc., and the Old Dominion for Virginia 
would apparently thus be merely an affectionate appropriation of a 
general and now archaic term for special uses. 

Various other geographical terms have acquired a richer emotional 
significance than the official names of the places in these regions 
convey. Thus The East and The West, The North and The South 
mean vastly more than directions on a map. The Middle West and 
The Far West raise visions, the one perhaps of comfort, the other of 
romance. Down East to the average American probably connotes 
doughnuts and pie and farmyard drama, and similar idyllic visions. 
The Western Reserve of Ohio and the Blue Grass of Kentucky define 
minor but important distinctions in the life of the Middle West. 
In Virginia, Tidewater Virginia, The Valley of Virginia, and Pied- 
mont Virginia are terms fraught with the deepest social, even though 
local significance. Of broader meaning in the South is the term 
The Cotton Belt. The Coast, of course, means the Pacific coast. 
The Shore means the Atlantic littoral. This sort of terminology could 
be followed far into the finest minutiae of the intimate vocabulary 
of localities. Every town or community has its West Sides and East 
Sides, its North Ends and South Ends, its Upper Parishes and its 
Lower Parishes, its Heights or its Flats, words which to the local 
sense often convey a meaning not on the surface and in fact beyond 
the power of mere words to express. 

Like the States, American cities also cultivate poetic and ora- 
torical second designations—or sometimes have such designations 


224 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


thrust upon them. Thus Boston is in name at least The Hub of the 
Universe. New York is Gotham, or preéminently The Metropolis, 
though this latter name is likely to be assumed by any city which is 
larger than some other city in the vicinity. Philadelphia is the City 
of Brotherly Love or the Quaker City. Chicago is the Windy City. 
Cincinnati is the Queen City of the West, though in the middle 
decades of the nineteenth century, before Chicago took this particular 
kind of distinction away from it, the city was also known as Pork- 
opolis. Cleveland is the Forest City. Washington is the City of 
Magnificent Distances, Baltimore is the City of Monuments, or the 
Monumental City, a designation cheaply won by the fact that the 
Washington Monument in Baltimore was one of the first to be erected 
in America. To exhaust this list would be practically to make a 
catalogue of all village, town and city names in the United States, 
and for the beginnings of such a catalogue one may consult the list 
in the World Almanac. A self-respecting, progressive American 
town feels it must have its poetic name, and also its slogan, before 
it is adequately equipped for rivalry with its neighboring towns. 
It is all a part of ‘‘boosting” the town, live American towns being 
constantly in a state of being built and rebuilt, and all live citizens 
being very active participants in this process, in the building of names 
as well as avenues and factories. 

At the conclusion of the preceding chapter, attention was called 
to the need for a comprehensive dictionary of American English. 
Two further desiderata now suggest themselves. The work of pro- 
viding gazetteers for the United States has scarcely begun. Occasional 
local studies have been made, but many more are needed, all looking 
towards a final and comprehensive geographical dictionary. The 
second need is for a dictionary of proper names. Genealogists 
have entered this field scatteringly, but the great body of the material 
remains hidden and untouched. 


LITERARY DIALECTS 


Literary dialects are popular dialects which have been employed 
as forms of literary expression. The relations of literary dialects to 
“real” dialects are not easily explicable, mainly because ‘‘real”’ dia- 
lects themselves are elusive and hard to define. Literary dialects, 
on the other hand, depend for their success upon being positive and 
readily recognizable. 

Literature written in dialect has been present at all times among 
highly civilized peoples, but probably more abundant when social 
life has been variegated and social standards still in process of for- 
mation than when the community life of a people has been estab- 
lished by long tradition. This may account for the fact that dialect 
literature has been, during the past one hundred years, an exception- 
ally favored form of literary composition in America. The contrast 
between a desiderated refined literary style and an actually present 
and respected native colloquial style must always be stimulating. 
Perhaps, also, in America, since the period of national independence, 
there has always been in the literary consciousness a background 
of hope that the popular native style might turn out to be the prince 
in disguise after all, that America might have in its immediate pos- 
session an original and unique literary medium of expression which 
when illustrated by the writings of genius would take its place among 
the perfected literary languages of the world. Certain it is that few 
American authors have been able to resist the temptation to experi- 
ment in the literary possibilities of the popular speech. 

The discussion of dialect always raises complicated questions of 
theoretical definition. In the common understanding of the term, 
a dialect is an irregular type of speech, estimated and in greater or 
less degree condemned, by comparison with what is assumed to be a 
normal and approved set of speech habits. In this conception, a 


dialect is a limited modification of ‘‘the language,”’ limited either by 
225 


226 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


local or by cultural considerations, whereas the standard speech is 
the thing itself. The language itself and a dialect are also conceived 
as each having a separate and distinctive existence, the dialect being 
a species of ‘‘the language,’ as the russet or the pippin are species 
of the apple. It is apparent on reflection, however, that genetically 
there is very little difference between an approved set of customs in 
speech, that is ‘‘the language,’’ and a contemned set, that is, “‘a 
dialect.’”’ As there is no apple, but only varieties of apple exist, so 
there is no essential language, but only varieties of languages. Both 
the terms ‘‘the language” and ‘“‘a dialect”’ designate merely the 
peculiar body of linguistic detail which the speakers of a particular 
group under observation at a given moment are seen to have in 
common. The question of approval or disapproval, that is of 
standard language or dialect, arises only after the event, only after 
the habits of the group have established themselves, and this ques- 
tion is answerable only on the basis of considerations different from 
those which were effective in establishing the customs of the group 
in the process of their formation. | 

It thus appears that in a true sense the standard speech also is a 
dialect. Moreover it is apparent that such generalizations made 
with respect to language are merely the convenient summaries of 
systematizers and theorizers, that a popular or local dialect becomes 
such in relation to the central language not at an absolutely fixed 
point, but at a point where in the opinion of some observer it be- 
comes sufficiently different from his conception of ‘‘the language”’ to 
justify him in regarding it as a distinct modification of the real 
language. It is often said that there are no true dialects in America, 
but if by true, one means truth to an objective reality, the question 
raised by this statement is futile, since there is no such thing as an 
absolute dialect, literary or colloquial. Dialects of all kinds are 
merely the convenient summaries of observers who bring together 
certain homogeneities in the speech habits of a group and thus secure 
for themselves an impression of unity. Other observers might secure 
different impressions by assembling different habits of the same 
groups, and it is true of course that in this matter of dialectal varia- 


LITERARY DIALECTS 227 


tions, final analysis brings one down to the individual speaker or 
writer as the ultimate ‘‘group.”’ No two speakers ever speak exactly 
alike. We may agree by convention to think that they do, but as 
soon as the bond of sympathy uniting two or more persons is broken, 
unexpected differences appear and become important. 

These theoretical aspects of a dialect have been thus briefly 
debated merely to prepare the way to answer the question whether 
American dialect writers have been true to reality, or perhaps the 
question may be better phrased, whether there has been an obvious 
reality, discovered by the scientific student, to which a writer of 
dialect was under obligation to conform. The answer to this latter 
question must be negative. The literary dialect and the scientific 
dialect are both merely summaries of detail which produce a sense 
of unity, of separateness and completeness, only in the mind of the 
person who constructs for himself from this detail a sense of unity 
and homogeneity. The difference between the literary and the sci- 
entific student of dialect is mainly one of degree. The latter at least 
attempts to exhaust all the details of dialect speech which can come 
under his observation, thus arriving at a finality of some kind, whereas 
the former utilizes only as much of his material as he thinks he 
needs for his special literary purposes. The literary artist attempts 
by occasional suggestion to produce the illusion of a distinct and 
-xeal”’ dialect speech, but the scientist endeavors to attain a different 
Peiccption of reality with an analytic method and an exhaustive 
examination of the material open to him for observation. Some- 
times, however, writers of literary dialects have become so interested 
in their dialect observations as to forget their literary purposes. They 
have often recorded dialect detail when it was not necessary or use- 
ful in suggesting an impression of dialect speech, carrying dialect thus 
beyond the literary into the scientific field. The purpose of this 
chapter will not be, however, to criticize American literary dialects 
from the point of view of their faithfulness to any supposed norms 
of dialect speech, but merely to indicate the character of the dialects 
chosen for literary purposes by examining the details of speech 
utilized to produce the impression of dialect. 


228 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


When it is said that there are no true dialects in America, the 
meaning plainly intended is that the characteristics of American 
speech are in no region or on no social level so obviously distinguished 
from those of the customary standard speech that they make of the 
dialect speech an easily recognizable kind of language in itself, per- 
haps intelligible only to those who are instructed in its peculiarities. 
Dialects of this kind have certainly not appeared in American lit- 
erature. There is, for example, no American dialect literature, rep- 
resenting native English speech, as different from classic American 
literature as broad Scots or the Somerset dialect of the poet Barnes 
is different from classic British literature. Such dialects as have been 
used for literary purposes in America represent on the whole rela- 
tively slight departures from the forms of standard speech, and they 
always imply the standard speech as. the background against which 
the dialect speech is contrasted. Nevertheless Americans themselves 
for the past century at least have been keenly aware of what they 
have felt to be dialectal differences, and variations which might seem 
slight to others, may be momentous in significance to the highly 
socialized American. 

Of the dialect material employed in American literature, several 
clear kinds may be distinguished. First and most extensive in use is 
the class dialect which distinguishes between popular and cultivated 
or standard speech. This calls for no detailed discussion. The im- 
pression of popular speech is easily produced by a sprinkling of such 
forms as aint, for isn’t, done for did, them for those, and similar gram- 
matical improprieties. This impression is often assisted by what 
may be termed ‘‘eye dialect,’’ in which the convention violated is one 
of the eye, not of the ear. Thus a dialect writer often spells a word 
like front as frunt, or face as fase, or picture as pictsher, not because he 
intends to indicate here a genuine difference of pronunciation, but 
the spelling is merely a friendly nudge to the reader, a knowing look 
which establishes a sympathetic sense of superiority between the 
author and reader as contrasted with the humble speaker of dialect. 

Another kind of class dialect is that which occurs in mixed speech, 
and racial conditions in America have likewise been favorable to an 


LITERARY DIALECTS 229 


abundant use of this type of dialect expression. None of it, however, 
has been of much literary significance, the mixture of German and 
English, Italian and English, Swedish and English, Polish and Eng- 
lish, Yiddish and English, and a great variety of possible and actually 
occurring combinations having been of interest mainly in the humor- 
ous sketch of the vaudeville stage or for occasional comic relief in nar- 
rative. In all use of dialect there is probably present some sense of 
amused superiority on the part of the conventional speaker as he 
views the forms of the dialect speech, but in his attitude towards 
mixed foreign dialects the American seems always to have experi- 
enced an unusual degree of exaltation and self-satisfaction. That is, 
the contrasts implied have been so violent that foreign mixed dia- 
lects have been available only for farce or very broad comedy. 

Besides the various kinds of class dialect, several forms of local 
dialect have also established themselves as recognizable types in 
American literary practice, and it is these indeed that one usually 
thinks of when one speaks of dialect literature. Just when a dialect 
may be said to have acquired position as a literary dialect, it is not 
always easy to say. The mountain speech of the Tennessee and 
Kentucky highlands, for example, has certain somewhat familiar 
and picturesque characteristics of its own and it has been used to 
some extent in literature, notably in the novels of Charles Egbert 
Craddock. It is a mixed dialect, containing numerous archaisms of 
speech which might appear in any American popular dialect, com- 
bined with other elements usually supposed to be characteristic of 
Southern speech. More to the point, however, is the fact that it 
has not been used in such a way in literature as to lead to literary 
imitations of it. Persons who have written the mountain dialect 
have usually stood in some first-hand relation to it, have in fact re- 
ported their observations in the spirit of the student of folklore. 
Perhaps the dialect has been too remote, too much the speech of a 
limited and uncouth people to serve as a general form of literary 
expression. 

American literary dialects which have been imitatively cultivated 
in any considerable body of literature are indeed not numerous and 


230 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


are readily recognizable as such from the literary monuments in 
which they appear. Of these the most familiar are the New England 
dialect, the Pike County or Southwestern dialect of John Hay, Bret 
Harte, Mark Twain, and others, the Southern dialect, and the negro 
dialect. All of these dialects have been used sympathetically. The 
distinction between standard and dialect speech has always been 
very clearly present in the use of them by various writers, but the 
attitude both towards the life depicted in dialect literature and toward 
the language in which the pictures of life have been written, has been 
interested and kindly. This has permitted the utilization of a rich 
dialect material, the writer being unhampered by a timid respect 
for the conventionalities and respectabilities of the standard speech. 
Least free and least expressive in this respect has been the dialect 
literature of the Southern whites. The tradition of dialect writing 
has not had as favorable a field for development in the South as it 
has had in the North or the West, or in negro literature, the reason 
probably being that unconventional Southern speech suggested to 
the Southern writer or reader, on the one hand, the speech of the 
despised poor white, whom the South has rarely treated sympathet- 
ically, and, on the other hand, the speech of the negro, whom the 
South was willing to treat sympathetically as long as such treatment 
did not imply the inclusion of white and black within the same group. 

One would not expect writers even of what is presumably the 
same dialect to use the same forms. Since a dialect is merely the 
sum of the particulars which a given observer synthesizes into an 
impression of a homogeneous speech, it may well happen that two 
different persons observing the speech of the same group, will base 
their impressions of unity upon widely differing details. One person 
will regard one feature of speech as quintessentially the mark of a 
certain dialect and another will choose quite a different feature or 
set of features. This merely means that each groups his associations 
around what for him have become distinguishing marks, what indeed 
with many dialect writers become distinguishing tricks. These 
marks may be called centers of association. Since it is impossible 
for the dialect writer to exhaust all the material, a selection he must 


LITERARY DIALECTS 231 


make, and the selected details must be given a sort of arbitrary value 
as standing for the dialect as a whole. The interest in the examina- 
tion of literary dialects lies in seeing just what the details selected 
are and what the reasons were which determined the choice of them. 

The humorous dialect character exemplified in the rustic but 
shrewd Yankee has had a long genealogy. He made his first appear- 
ance in drama, and Jonathan in Royall Tyler’s The Contrast (1787) 
began a stage tradition which has not yet expired. A good early 
example of rustic Yankee character in drama is Jonathan Postfree, 
in the comedy of that name (1806), by L. Beach. The type of 
character, however, did not become widely known and popular as a 
literary device until the publication of the Jack Downing letters of 
Seba Smith, which first began to appear in the Daily Courier at Port- 
land, Maine, in 1830. After that the character became a common 
possession, a familiar citizen, one may say, in the world of popular 
imagination. The fullest and most important realization of this 
literary figure was in the character of Hosea Biglow, in Lowell’s 
Biglow Papers, the First Series of which appeared in a published vol- 
ume in 1848, the Second Series, in 1866. In the third quarter of 
the century the local sketch and story engaged the interest of many 
writers in America, and numerous dialect studies of New England 
life and character gave evidence of study of local speech which was 
often minute and painstaking. There have thus been many literary 
transcriptions of rustic New England speech, differing as one would 
expect according to the powers of observation of the various recorders 
and the different speech habits examined by them. Obviously no 
one of these many literary transcriptions of New England rustic 
speech can lay claim to being the only true and right record, since 
there never has existed a single “‘true”’ dialect in New England. In 
choosing a literary dialect for exemplification, therefore, one must 
make a decision more or less arbitrary. But perhaps no New Eng- 
land dialect literature has been more generally or more readily rec- 
ognized as such than the Biglow Papers. Lowell himself insisted 
that his dialect transcriptions were very accurate, that he recorded 
nothing which he had not himself heard. But whether they were 


232 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


accurate or not, it is true that to the American reader they have 
stood as typically representative of Yankee dialect speech and have 
thus, one may say, made the speech for literary purposes. It will 
be not uninstructive to examine the Biglow Papers to see just what 
ingredients entered into the composition of this recognizable American 
dialect. 

Lowell himself in the introduction to the First Series of the 
Biglow Papers has given a prescription for the compounding of 
Yankee dialect. The directions are as follows: 

1. ‘‘The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the 
r when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity 
in avoiding it even before a vowel.” This rule covers the well- 
known fact of the tendency of all Eastern and Southern speech 
not to pronounce r finally and before consonants. 

2. ‘He seldom sounds the final g, a piece of self-denial, if we 
consider his partiality for nasals. The same of the final d, as 
han’ and stan’ for hand and stand.’ The unsounded final g here 
referred to is the letter as it appears in writing, etc., pronounced 
in all popular speech with final [n] instead of [n]. The pronun- 
ciation of han’ for hand, etc., is a lax articulation also found in 
all forms of popular speech. 

3. ‘The h in such words as while, when, where, he omits alto- 
gether.”’ This also is a characteristic of speech widely distrib- 
uted and found in other regions than in New England. 

4. “In regard to a, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes 
giving a close and obscure sound, as hev for have, hendy for handy, 
ez for as, thet for that, and again giving it the broad sound it has in 
father, as haénsome for handsome.’ These are two quite different 
things, one being [e] where standard speech has [se], the other 
being [a:] where standard speech has [ze]. Of these two the latter 
is much more distinctive as a characteristic of dialect, though it 
appeared in relatively only a small number of words. 

5. ‘To the sound ou he prefixes an e (hard to exemplify other- 
wise than orally).’”’ This sound Lowell does try to indicate by 
the spelling neow for now, heouse for house, etc., in a sample pas- 


LITERARY DIALECTS 233 


sage of New England dialect. Pronounced literally as Lowell 

spelled them, one would get in these words a pronunciation which 

Lowell pretty certainly did not have in mind. What he had in 

mind was the pronunciation of a diphthong for ou, the first ele- 

ment of which was approximately the vowel of mat or of met, a 

pronunciation found not only in New England but also in the 

South. 

6. “Au, in such words as daughter and slaughter, he pronounces 
ah,” that is with the vowel of father. 

7. “To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl ad libitum”— 
though unfortunately Lowell does not say what he means by 
the word drawl. 

When one looks at these rules from the point of view of general 
American speech, one finds that only the fourth and the sixth may be 
said to be in any high degree characteristic of New England. The 
first and the fourth New England shares with the South, and the 
second and third are common to all popular English speech. The 
seventh may designate something peculiar to New England, but 
Lowell’s statement gives no clue as to what it is. Since five and 
seven can be exemplified only orally, and since one, two and three 
are common to all popular speech and six would apply at the most 
only to a few words, if one were to write dialect according to Lowell’s 
rules, the only features of speech which might be regarded as charac- 
teristic of New England speech would be those of four, that is hev 
for have, etc., and an occasional a of father for the first vowel in 
handsome and a few other words. Manifestly one would need ampler 
and clearer directions than these to write what would be recognized 
as a New England dialect. 

When one examines Lowell’s practice in the writing of his New 
England dialect, one observes that even his own few rules are not 
adequately exemplified in his spellings. He did not omit 7 finally 
or before consonants, nor did he spell words like while, when, where, 
as wile, w’en, were. He made no attempt in the Papers to reduce to 
spelling the pronunciation of ow mentioned in his fifth rule, or of au 
in his sixth, or of broad a in handsome in the second half of his fourth, 


234 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


and of course the drawl of the seventh went unrecorded. With 
these exclusions what would be left of Lowell’s rules would be very 
little, not enough to establish the impression of a dialect style, except 
merely the style of general low colloquial speech. Lowell’s practice, 
however, was much more complicated than his precept, and it is only 
by turning to the poems themselves that one can examine the various 
devices by means of which Lowell produced the impression of dialect. 

For the purpose of making such an examination, it seems fair 
to take a passage from The Courtin’, a poem which Lowell himself 
selected as representative. Such dialect color as the Biglow Papers 
have is illustrated in the following stanzas: 


An’ yit she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 
An’ on her apples kep’ to work, 
Parin’ away like murder. 


‘*You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?”’ 
‘Wal ...no... I come dasignin’—”’ 
‘*To see my Ma? She’s sprinklin’ clo’es 
Agin to-morrer’s i’nin’.”’ 
To say why gals acts so or so, 
Or don’t, ’ould be presumin’; 
Mebby to mean yes an’ say no 
Comes nateral to women. 


He stood a spell on one foot fust, 
Then stood a spell on t’other, 
An’ on which one he felt the wust 

He couldn’t ha’ told ye nuther. 


Says he, “I’d better call agin,”’ 
Says she, “Think likely, Mister:” 
Thet last word pricked him like a pin, 
An’... Wal, he up an’ kist her. 


When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips, 
Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 

All kin’ 0’ smily roun’ the lips 
An’ teary roun’ the lashes. 


Even a cursory analysis of this passage shows that the departures 
from the customary uncolored style of literary English are not all on 


LITERARY DIALECTS 235 


the same level. Some of them are merely phonetic spellings of pro- 
nunciations that might occur in any speech except the most formal. 
Such are an’ for and and ez for unstressed as, which in such a position 
would ordinarily be pronounced [oz]. Others belong to the speech of 
the careless or uneducated English speaker everywhere, and these 
may be designated merely as General Low Colloquial, pronunciations 
like an’ and ez being designated as General Colloquial. There remain 
then certain forms possibly peculiar to New England, or at least 
commonly felt to be characteristic of New England speech, and these 
may be described as Local Dialect. All the details in the passage 
quoted above which differ from conventional literary English might 
then be grouped under these three heads as follows: 


General Colloquial General Low Colloquial Local Dialect 
an’ yit wal 
eZ gin nateral 
Pa cheer fust 
s’pose furder wust 
Ma kep’ thet 
clo’es parin’ sot 
don’t dasignin’ 
couldn’t sprinklin’ 
ye agin 
kist tomorrer’s 
"em nin’ 

gals 
’ould 
presumin’ 
mebby 
t’other 
ha’ 
nuther 
bimeby 
Huldy 
kin’ 

0’ 
roun’ 


From this tabulation one must conclude that Lowell’s New Eng- 
land dialect is merely the speech of ordinary low colloquial American 
discourse with a relatively slight addition of dialect detail more or 


236 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


less peculiar to New England. Further analysis of Lowell’s dialect 
writing and of those of others who have written in the New England 
dialect would confirm this conclusion. The New England dialect 
as a literary form is mainly popular or illiterate American English 
with a very occasional splash of genuine local color. The intimate 
association of New England dialect literature with New England 
life was not made through language but through content, through 
setting, characterization, incident and sentiment. In this poem, for 
example, the New England feeling is given more by the rustic sim- 
plicity of the content of the poem than by the language of it, and the 
same observation could be made of a surprisingly large part of Amer- 
ican dialect literature. Lowell’s dialect in a story of the California 
gold fields would pass as a Western dialect, and would seem not 
widely out of place on a cotton plantation in the South. An idyllic 
rustic situation of apple paring and kissing, however, localizes the 
poem as at least in the spirit of New England dialect literature. 

The same method of analysis as that employed in The Courtin’ 
when applied to a typical specimen of Southwestern literary dialect 
will yield a similar result. For the purpose of illustration, John 
Hay’s Luttle Breeches, in Pike County Ballads (1871), may be chosen: 


General Colloquial Low Colloquial Local Dialect 

Id I never ain’t had no show larnt 
sence = since hell-to-split 
peart and chipper and sassy sarched 
chaw =chew hosses 
terbacker upsot 

keer critter’s 

rousted up somewhar 
jest = just thar 
crotch-deep sot 
Isrul = Israel toted 
eit fotching 
derned 


Here again the basis of John Hay’s Southwestern dialect is seen 
to be ordinary uncultivated American speech with some specifically 
local characteristics added. But when one looks more closely at the 


LITERARY DIALECTS 237 


local dialect words in this poem one finds few of them that may be 
regarded as peculiar to a Southwestern or Pike County dialect, for 
larnt, sarched, hosses, wpsot, critter’s, sot might all be taken as marks 
of New England dialect, and somewhar, thar, toted, and fotching are 
of course familiar in all Southern dialect. The so-called South- 
western dialect as it has existed in literature has been in reality 
merely low colloquial speech with an addition of certain details from 
New England and from Southern dialect speech. Occasionally, as in 
Bret Harte, some local terms of the mining camps and the gambling 
table found their way into Southwestern literature, but these words 
came because of the subject matter and were not essential to the 
dialect, except indeed as subject matter gave to this literature its 
peculiar color and quality. The content of the New England dialect 
literature has been rustic, simple, worldly-wise beneath a surface 
covering of seeming guilelessness. Southwestern literature has been 
free and easy, with a careless largeness both of sentiment and ex- 
pression. In Little Breeches, hell-to-split is a characteristically unre- 
strained Southwestern intensive. Western picturesqueness and mag- 
nanimity appear in Jim Bludso’s promise and deed as the fire swept 
over his burning vessel: 


“Tl hold her nozzle agin the bank 
Till the last galoot’s ashore.”’ 


Or in the concluding words of Banty Tim, in another of the Pike 
County Ballads: 
“You may rezoloot till the cows come home, 
But ef one of you tetches the boy, 


He’ll wrastle his hash tonight in hell, 
Or my name’s not Tilman Joy.” 


The figurative picturesqueness of writing like this, however, is not 
fairly to be described as dialectal. It belongs to the realm of imag- 
ination, of thought or content, whereas dialect more properly is a 
matter of the forms of language. So far as the mere forms of lan- 
guage are concerned, there is little in the Pike County Ballads or 
in the writings of Bret Harte or any other Southwestern writer 


238 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


which could not be found in almost any dialect community in Amer- 
ica. Content, on the other hand, is extremely highly colored in this 
literature and in the main unmistakably indicative of a clearly 
defined local type of American life. One readily transfers the feeling 
for distinctive locality and action to language, for language, like the 
chameleon, takes color to accord with surroundings. 

When one comes to the selection of a passage illustrating Southern 
literary dialect one is embarrassed by the fact that there are no 
Southern writings which may be said to stand as typically represen- 
tative of Southern white dialect in the way that Lowell is represen- 
tative of New England dialect and Bret Harte or John Hay is repre- 
sentative of Pike County dialect. When one thinks of the South 
in a literary way, ordinarily one thinks of Virginia, but the Virginian 
as he figures in literature speaks usually as a conventional gentleman, 
with slight touches of local color indicated by the occasional omission 
of r, as in suh for szr, or by such pronunciations as gya’dn for garden, 
Cya’ter for Carter, etc. But writers who have attempted to depict 
what may be called reputable Southern persons on the whole have 
sedulously avoided the deviations from standard grammar and stand- 
ard pronunciation common to most forms of familiar American Eng- 
lish. That the ‘Southern gentleman” always spoke with strict 
grammatical propriety and with nice precision in enunciation, one 
may doubt. If he seems to have been much more a man of the con- 
ventional world than local characters elsewhere in America, this is 
probably an illusion cherished by the transcribers of Southern life, 
who perhaps have been willing to sacrifice certain elements of realism 
and truthfulness in order not to seem to imperil the dignity of the 
accredited conservers of the social tradition of the Southern com- 
munity. 

Parallel to the seven rules for writing the New England dialect 
which Lowell gave, a Southern scholar and historian has given seven 
rules for writing the Southern literary dialect, see C. Alphonso Smith, 
A History of American Literature, ed. Trent, II, 365. These rules are 
as follows: 


LITERARY DIALECTS 239 


1. ‘‘Inke does duty for as 7f in such sentences as ‘He looks like 
he was sick.’ This construction, says Lowell, is ‘never found in New 
England.’”’ 


2. “’ Low (allow), meaning think and say, though ‘never heard in 
New England’ (Lowell), is very common among white and black 
illiterates, as it is in the pages of Bret Harte. Guess in the New 
England sense is also used, but New England cal’late (calculate) is 
unknown.” 


3. “Such words as tune, news, duty (but not true, rule, sue, dude) 
have the vanishing y-sound heard in few. This pronunciation, like 
the retention of broad a, can hardly be called dialect, but it is almost 
a shibboleth of the Southerner to the manner born, and helps to 
differentiate him from the Westerner and Northerner.” 


4. “The vanishing y-sound heard in gyarden, cyards, Cyarter, 
Gyarfield, is common in Virginia but less so in other parts of the 
South.” 


5. ‘“The same may be said of broad a, intermediate a (halfway 
between father and fat) being distinctively academic and acquired.”’ 


6. ‘More, store, floor, four, door, and similar words are usually 
pronounced mo, sto, flo, fo, do, by negroes. Among the white popu- 
lation the r is not pronounced, but these words have two distinct 
syllables, the last syllable having the obscure wh sound heard in 
mower, stower. “The tendency in the North and West to pronounce 
long o as au (in autumnal rather than in autumn) is not observable 
in the South.” 


7. ‘‘The most distinctive idiom in the South is the use of you 
all, meaning not all of you but you folks, you people, you boys, you 
girls. It may be addressed to one person but always implies more 
than one. If a Southerner says to a clerk in a store, ‘Do you all keep 
shoes here?’ he means by ‘you all’ not the single clerk but the entire 
firm or force that owns or operates the store.” 

The rules in this list for writing Southern dialect have to do both 
with words or constructions and with pronunciations. The first two 
are dubious as local tests. The Century Dictionary points out that 


240 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


like as a conjunction, though ordinarily condemned or unrecorded in 
the dictionaries, occurs ‘‘several times in Shakespeare,” “‘not unfre- 
quently in modern writers,” and is ‘‘common in colloquial and pro- 
vincial English.”’ Lowell’s statement that like as a conjunction is 
“never found in New England” is one of those universal negatives 
that invite disbelief. The construction indeed is so common in 
popular American English that it has no distinctive local associa- 
tions, and so general that all purists and rhetoricians unite in con- 
demning it. The use of ‘low, allow, in the sense of think or say, 
Lowell again declared was ‘‘never heard in New England.”’ ‘Thorn- 
ton queries this statement, and under allow gives American examples 
beginning with 1801, some of which belong to New England. The 
fact that this use of allow existed in New England does not, however, 
altogether destroy its value as a test of Southern speech, since un- 
doubtedly it was and still is much more commonly used in the South 
than elsewhere. The pronunciation mentioned in the third rule is 
again so general as to have little value as a mark of local dialect, 
especially literary dialect, for dialect writers have rarely made any 
effort to distinguish by spelling or otherwise between the pronuncia- 
tion of tune with the vowel of boot and with the vowel of mute. Rules 
four and five apply only to Virginia, and even there only to certain 
types of Virginian speech. Rules six and seven remain as describing 
fairly definite characteristics of Southern dialect speech. It is 
apparent, however, that these two rules, or the whole set of seven 
rules, are altogether inadequate as directions for writing a satis- 
factory and recognizable Southern dialect. As Lowell’s own prac- 
tice was better than the precepts laid down in his rules, so any lit- 
erary transcription of Southern speech by a fairly competent observer 
will give a more convincing impression of Southern dialect speech 
than a set of rules like that which has just been analyzed. 

No more skilful literary transcriptions of Southern speech, both 
the speech of whites and of negroes, have been made than those of 
Joel Chandler Harris. The following passage is taken from Mingo 
(1884), and from the title story of the volume, described as a sketch 
not of a ‘“‘poor white,” but of a self-respecting well-to-do woman of 


LITERARY DIALECTS 241 


democratical central Georgia, a woman who hates “‘ Virginia ways” 
and ‘“‘quality idees,” but is not lacking in pride of her own: 

“When I seen her a-kneelin’ thar, with ’er year-rings a-danglin’ 
an’ ’er fine feathers a-tossin’ an’ a-trimblin’, leetle more an’ my 
thoughts would ’a’ sot me afire. I riz an’ I stood over her, an’ I 
says, says I,— 

“Emily Wornum, whar you er huntin’ the dead you oughter 
hunted the livin’. What’s betwix’ you an’ your Maker I can’t tell,’ 
says I, ‘but if you git down on your face an’ lick the dirt what Deely 
Bivins walked on, still you won’t be humble enough to go whar 
she’s gone, nor good enough nuther. She died right yer while you 
was a-traipsin’ an’ a-trollopin’ roun’ frum pos’ to pillar a-upholdin’ 
your quality idees. These arms helt ’er,’ says I, ‘an’ ef hit hadn’t 
but ’a’ bin for her, Emily Wornum,’ says I, ‘I’d ’a’ strangled the life 
out’n you time your shadder darkened my door. An’ what’s more,’ 
says I, ‘ef you er come to bother airter Pud, thes make the trial of it. 
Thes so much as lay the weight er your little finger on ’er,’ says I, ‘an’ 
I'll grab you by the goozle an’ t’ar your haslet out,’ says I.”’ 

Applying the same method of analysis to this piece of admirable 
writing as to the passage of New England and Southwestern dialect, 
one has the following tables as the result: 


General Colloquial 


Low Colloquial 


Local Dialect 


an’ seen =saw thar 

er =are a-kneelin’ year-rings = 

what’s = what is ’er =her ear-rings 

can’t a-danglin’ sot =set 

won't a-tossin’ rlz =rose 

frum =from a-trimblin’ whar 

hadn’t leetle yer 

bin = been ’a’ =have helt 

Id I says airter = after 

what’s huntin’ thes = just 

er =of oughter = ought to have goozle = throat 

Vil livin’ t’ar =tear 
betwix’ haslet = inwards 
git 


Deely = Delia 


242 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Low Colloquial 


for to go 
nuther 

you was 
a-traipsin’ 
a-trollopin’ 
roun’ 

pos’ 
a-upholdin’ 
idees 

ef =if 
out’n =out of 
shadder 


Of the details listed under the head of General Colloquial, some 
are merely the ordinary abbreviations of all colloquial speech, like 
can’t, won’t, what’s, others are pure eye dialect, like frum and bin, 
which everybody pronounces in this way, and the spelling er is used 
to represent an unstressed form of are and of, both of which would 
take weakened forms in the unstressed position in all colloquial 
speech. In the third column, it is doubtful if such variant preterite 
forms as sot, riz, and helt should be included and should not rather 
be placed in the second column. This would leave as the character- 
istic marks of this local dialect a pronunciation of where, there, and 
tear with the vowel of far, of the initial sound of ear, hear as though 
a y preceded, of just as thes, of after as airter, though this might also 
go into the second column, and finally the two words goozle and haslet. 
Of these the most characteristic are the pronunciations thar, whar 
and var, fairly constant marks of literary transcriptions of Southern 
dialect. 

@ The main conclusion to be drawn from this analysis of passages 
| from American dialect literature is that all local dialects of this kind 
are at bottom merely general colloquial or low colloquial American 
English, with a slight sprinkling of more characteristic words or 
pronunciations, some of which suggest fairly definite local associations, 
often in the case of words by connection with some peculiar local 
occupation or activity. A person who speaks a low colloquial Eng- 
lish in plantation surroundings is readily interpreted to be a South- 


LITERARY DIALECTS 243 


erner of some degree, but essentially the same language spoken on the 
range would establish the speaker as a cowboy, or in the gold region 
as a miner. The statement quoted earlier in this chapter, that 
there are no true dialects in America, is thus seen to be in the main 
defensible, so far as dialects have been utilized for literary purposes. 
One may say that there have been only two forms of speech in Amer- 
ica, the more or less formal standard and the more or less informal 
colloquial. American dialect literature rests upon a foundation of 
general informal colloquial speech, locally established by action and 
setting with its local character confirmed by a slight addition of local | 
practices in speech. 

According to a prevalent and traditional opinion, Bret Harte 
wrote bad dialect, bad in the sense that it was not true to the speech 
of the kinds of persons who figured in his stories. Brander Matthews, 
Essays on English, Chapter XIII, quotes Mark Twain as saying that 
he had to go over a piece written in collaboration by Twain and 
Harte ‘‘and get the dialect right,’”’ that Harte ‘“‘never did know any- 
thing about dialect.’”’ Whether Bret Harte’s dialect was true or not 
is a question which obviously cannot now be answered, for there is 
no more authentic record of the speech of the mining camps now 
available than that which Bret Harte himself has given. But even 
at the time the stories and poems were written, it would have been 
difficult to tell whether or not Bret Harte had actually heard and 
observed the forms of speech which he utilized for dialect color. One 
could tell this only if one had present for examination the very same 
persons that Bret Harte used as his models. But if one examines 
Bret Harte’s dialect from the point of view of its historical plausibil- 
ity, there appears to be no reason why it should not have existed in 
California, since the elements of it all have a reputable dialect his- 
tory. The ingredients of Bret Harte’s dialect are historically good, 
but whether or not these ingredients were judiciously mixed could 
be determined only by knowing how the persons actually spoke 
whom Bret Harte heard—a knowledge now past finding out. If one » 
takes a poem like Penelope (Simpson’s Bar, 1888), as abundantly 
and strikingly dialectal as any of Bret Harte’s writings, and if one 


244 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


classifies all the dialect detail in the poem as was done with other 
dialect passages, one finds little that is not perfectly familiar: 


General Colloquial Low Colloquial Southern Low Colloquial 
you’ve kem = come ’yer = here 
agen = again derned ’yer’s =here is 
won’t cavortin’ thar = there 
I’ve ef =if 
can’t cheer = chair 
don’t them (demonstrative adjective) 
you'd theer = there 

cushings = cushions 

jest = just 

a courtin’ 

widder = widow 

critter 


baird = beard 

nary =not any 

foolin’ 

sartain 

gal =girl 

anywheer =any where 

The most interesting result of such an analysis is that it shows 

nothing in this poem distinctive for a Western or California dialect, 
and the result would be the same if one included other dialect writings 
of Bret Harte. Aside from a few Spanish words or phrases and some 
locutions peculiar to the life of the mining camps, all of Bret Harte’s 
local color in speech is a mixture of familiar New England and 
general low colloquialisms with some more definitely Southern low 
colloquialisms. The use of kem for come is not frequently recorded, 
but it is common in the Indiana dialect of the second quarter of the 
nineteenth century as it appears in Carlton’s New Purchase and is 
used in the Tennessee mountain dialect of Charles Egbert Craddock. 
Other forms like cheer for chair, theer for there, baird for beard, nary 
for not any, sartain for certain, are good old New Englandisms. The 
common statement that Bret Harte got his dialect from Dickens is 
not supported by an examination of the actual details of his practice. 
All his dialect material was good American. Even his use of which 
as a kind of demonstrative or coérdinating conjunction is supported 


LITERARY DIALECTS 245 


by other local American use. A typical instance of this use is found 
in the opening stanza of Truthful James: 


“Which I wish to remark 
And my language is plain, 
That for ways that are dark 
And for tricks that are vain, 
The heathen Chinee is peculiar, 
Which the same I would rise to explain.” 


Similar constructions are cited by Merwin, Life of Bret Harte, p. 326, 
for Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia and Arkansas. It seems not to have 
been recorded for New England, but the evidence for its existence 
as a Southern low colloquialism is too conclusive to be doubted. 
To the authorities cited by Merwin may be added two other compe- 
tent observers. In Mingo, p. 22, Joel Chandler Harris wrote: “ ’an 
how she cast off her own daughter, which Deely was as good a girl 
as ever draw’d the breath er life.’ The dialect poems of Sidney 
Lanier, which also record Middle Georgia speech, contain numerous 
examples, the following being representative: ‘‘This man—which 
his name it was also Jones” (1869), Poems, p. 180; ‘‘But Jones 
(which he had tuck a tod)” (1870), p. 184; “Five years glid by, 
and Brown, one day (which he’d got so fat, that he wouldn’t weigh) ”’ 
(1869), p. 181. 


Probably the best known and best loved of all dialect writers in 
America has been James Whitcomb Riley. The dialect he sup- 
posedly used was the Hoosier dialect of Indiana. Analysis again 
shows, however, that this dialect is made up of an abundance of 
ordinary colloquialisms, including much eye dialect, with some archa- 
isms of speech which survive as low colloquialisms. The following 
tabulation of all the dialect detail in The Old Man and Jim shows 
nothing that would not seem natural anywhere in America: 


General Colloquial Low Colloquial 

er = unstressed or *ceptin’ = excepting 
fer =for jes’ = just 

deepot = depot heerd = heard 


ust to =used to backin’ 


246 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


General Colloquial Low Colloquial 
he’d =he would ’at =that 

he’d =he had keer =care 
instunce = instance yourse’f 

"em =them *peared = appeared 
plum’ = plumb lookin’ 

hadn’t likin’ 


hisse’f-like 
’cause = because 
drillin’ 
a-watchin’ 
a-heerin’ 

nothin’ 
disting’ished 
writ = wrote 
dern 

rigiment 

fightin’ 

farmin’ 

seen = saw 
calvery = cavalry 
"lowed 

sich 

afore 

follered 

tel = until 

rid =rode 

tuk = took 
believin’ 

‘ud = would 
p’inted = pointed 
t’other 

clumb = climbed 
a-laughin’ 
bendin’ 

turnin’ 

dyin’ 


A typical passage of Southern negro dialect is almost as difficult 
to discover as one for Southern white popular dialect. ‘‘The dialect 
of the negroes of Eastern Virginia,’ says Thomas Nelson Page, in 
a note prefixed to In Ole Virginia, ‘‘differs totally from that of the 
Southern negroes, and in some material points from that of those 


LITERARY DIALECTS 247 


located farther west.”’ The dialect of the Southern negroes here 
referred to is presumably the Gullah dialect of the rice fields of 
South Carolina and Georgia. This is indeed a very individual negro 
dialect, but it has not of recent years been utilized to any great extent 
in literature. The two remaining dialects are the dialect of Eastern 
Virginia and the dialect of the inland regions of Virginia and Georgia. 
The first of these latter two types has been most skilfully utilized in 
the Virginia tales and sketches of Thomas Nelson Page, the second 
in the plantation legends of Joel Chandler Harris. Remarking that 
it is “impossible to reproduce the exact sound” and that he has 
found it “‘necessary to subordinate the phonetic arrangement to 
intelligibility,’ Page gives the following rules as of aid in representing 
the negro dialect of Eastern Virginia: 

“The final consonant is rarely sounded. Adverbs, prepositions 
and short words are frequently slighted, as is the possessive. The 
letter r is not usually rolled except when used as a substitute for th, 
but is pronounced ah. For instance the following is a fair representa- 
tion of the peculiarities cited: The sentence, ‘It was curious, he said, 
he wanted to go into the other army’ would sound: ‘ ’I'wuz cu-yus, 
he say, he wan(t) (to) go in (to) turr ah-my.’ ” 

English thus transcribed looks markedly different from other 
forms of literary dialect. But it is a legitimate inquiry how far this 
difference is due merely to a completer carrying out of a phonetic 
method than is customary in transcriptions of the dialect of whites. 
Thus ’Twuz for It was might be observed in any rapid colloquial 
speech, and ah-my for army would be general Southern or New 
England usage. Even cu-yus for curious one would not be surprised 
to hear generally in the South, since r is ordinarily omitted in final 
position in this type of speech, and the first syllable of curzous may 
be treated as independent. In the transcription, wan go for want to 
go, the record is certainly not adequate. The negro pronunciation 
he wan go is not merely equivalent rhythmically to a man go, but wan 
is followed by a pause, the stop position for ¢ being formed but no 
explosion made, which separates the word want from go. The final 
n of wan may thus be said to be long. In colloquial English the phrase 


248 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


want to go would be pronounced in any case only with one ¢ and in 
rapid speech it would be [wan ta go:] or even [wan t go:]. The differ- 
ence between [wan: go:] and [wan t got] is thus seen to be much less 
than the apparent difference between want to go and wan go. In 
other words, literary transcriptions of negro dialect are likely to 
approach more nearly to scientific exactness in the recording of the 
minuter details of the phonetic side of speech than other literary 
transcriptions of dialect ordinarily do, and thus to seem further 
removed from the familiar forms of standard speech. One hears the 
illiterate speech of negroes more illiterately than one hears the 
illiterate speech of one’s fellow-whites. 

In the recording of the best known negro dialect, that of Uncle 
Remus, Joel Chandler Harris definitely avowed a scientific intention. 
He declared that the language of his negro legends was ‘‘ phonetically 
genuine,” Uncle Remus, p. 4, and that his book, though included by 
the publishers in the list of their humorous publications, was in 
intention perfectly serious. When the book was issued, however, the 
interest of the public soon made it apparent that the plantation 
legends it contained and the language in which they were related 
were much more important as literature than as folk-lore. If there 
is such a thing as classic negro literary dialect, it is to be found in 
the speech of Uncle Remus. The following passage from the conclu- 
sion of the story of the Tar-Baby is typical and may be made the 
basis of analysis: 

“Skin me, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘snatch out my 
eyeballs, t’ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,’ sezee, 
‘but do please, Brer Fox, don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ 
sezee. 

‘“‘Co’se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he 
cotch ’im by de behime legs en slung ’im right in de middle er de 
brier-patch. Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck 
the bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang ’roun’ fer to see w’at wuz gwineter 
happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call ’im, en way up de hill he see 
Brer Rabbit settin’ cross-legged on a chinkapin log koamin’ de pitch 
outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off 


LITERARY DIALECTS 249 


mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some er 
his sass, en he holler out: | 

“Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox—bred en bawn in 
a brier-patch!’ en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de 
embers.” 

Like most semi-scientific phonetic transcriptions, this passage 
calls for some explanation. For the first thing, it is not altogether 
clear what Harris meant by the spelling Brer for brother, er for of, 
sorter for sort of, ter for to, wanter for want to, gwineter for going to, 
but the probabilities are that he meant to indicate by the spelling er 
in Brer not [brer], but a vowel sound similar to the vowel of brother 
with its ordinary pronunciation, though with the th lost in the negro 
dialect of Uncle Remus; er for of would be the sound of the word 
as it appears in the phrase four o’clock, and ter for to would be the 
pronunciation which this word would have in unstressed position in 
any colloquial speech. 

The value of the consonant represented by d in spelling like de 
for the, dar for there, wid for with, that is for voiced th in unstressed 
position, seems also not certain. Was the d intended to represent a 
genuine explosive [d], or merely a very much voiced [6], a sound which 
could only be represented in the conventional alphabet by d? The 
latter is the more probable supposition. It will be observed also that 
Harris made frequent use of eye dialect, as in sez for says, and that 
on the other hand he did not systematically indicate the loss of r 
finally or before consonants, as in hurt, hear, but did write co’se for 
course and bawn for born, an inconsistency probably resulting from a 
disinclination to load the page too heavily with unconventional 
spellings. The general effect produced by the Uncle Remus 
stories is strongly dialectal, but on examination relatively little in 
them is found to be dialectally peculiar. Classifying the dialect 
details of this passage under the four heads, General Colloquial, 
General Low Colloquial, Southern Low Colloquial, and Negro Dialect, 
General Colloquial including eye dialect, one has the following 
result: 


250 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


General Colloquial General Low Colloquial Southern Low Colloquial Negro Dialect 


Sez sezee =says he t’ar =tear Brer 
en =and wanter = want to years =ears de =the 
"im ez =as co’se = course dat =that 
wuz = was kin =can whar = where behime = 
considerbul cotch gwineter =going to behind 
koam (in’) = er =of har =hair dar = there 
comb(ing) sorter =sort of bleedzed = obliged bimeby = 
bin = been ’roun’ = around bawn by and by 
fer =for wid = with 
ter =to den = then 
w’at = what des = just 


settin’ = sitting 
koamin’ = combing 
outen =out of 
swop 

sass 

holler 


To the fourth column should be added certain characteristic tense 
formations. As a preterite of catch, cotch historically belongs to gen- 
eral colloquial American speech, but lingers now chiefly in negro 
English. The emphatic negative do don’t is not current as a general 
low colloquialism, and the persistent use of present forms, as hang, 
hear, see, know, skip, and bin (been) for had been is also not found in 
general low colloquial use. If to these one adds the spelling d 
for voiced th, one exhausts all the possible distinctive marks of negro 
dialect in this passage. That the speech of Uncle Remus as Joel 
Chandler Harris heard it differed markedly even from Southern low 
colloquial is possible, but if so, his literary transcription of the dialect 
of Uncle Remus gives remarkably few clues which will enable one to 
realize this difference. The speech of Uncle Remus and the speech 
of rustic whites as Harris records it are so much alike that if one did 
not know which character was speaking, one might often be unable 
to tell whether the words were those of a white man or of a negro. A 
similar statement has been made by a competent Southern observer. 
‘“‘If one happened to be talking to a native with one’s eyes shut,” 
says Harrison, Negro English, p. 232, ‘‘it would be impossible to tell 
whether a negro or a white person were responding.”’ 


LITERARY DIALECTS 251 


However this may be in actual speech, certainly in literary tran- 
scriptions of negro speech there is very little that might be regarded 
as making a specifically negro dialect. There are no African elements, 
in these transcriptions, no survivals of an original speech which 
make the English of negroes seem like the speech of foreigners who 
have imperfectly assimilated English. Negro English as written by 
such representative authors as Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chand- 
ler Harris is in fact not different from any other dialectal form of 
American English, that is, it is merely general low colloquial English 
with a light sprinkling of words or phrases which by custom have 
come to have closer associations with negro speech. Whether these 
literary transcriptions are true to the ‘‘real’”’ negro dialect is one of 
those questions impossible to answer in the lack of any accepted 
definition of the essential elements of negro English. One cannot 
suppose, however, that writers like Page and Harris have intention- 
ally misrepresented the facts, and moreover the historical examination 
of the characteristics of American dialect speech makes it plain that 
the details of American dialect speech, both of negro and white, are 
for the most part survivals of older and native English elements in 
the language. 

The several attempts that have been made to record Gullah 
dialect differ considerably from each other, but the following passage 
is as fully dialectal as any. It is taken from The Black Border, 
Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast, by Ambrose E.. Gonzales, Colum- 
bia, S. C., 1922. In the foreword to this book, the author gives the 
titles of several other works in Gullah dialect, though none of these 
employ as thoroughgoing, realistic and phonetic method of transcrip- 
tion. The following passage occurs on p. 207: 

‘‘Maussuh, uh binnuh stan’ een Willtown road close to Mas’ 
Edwu’d Baa’nwell’ Clifton place, w’en uh yeddy de dog duh comin’ 
fuh me, en’ uh stop fuh liss’n. Bimeby, uh see de mukkle [myrtle] 
duh shake, en’, fus’ t’ing uh know, de deer jump out de t’icket en’ 
light een de big road en’ look ’puntop me! ’E foot fall saaf’ly ’pun 
de groun’ same lukkuh cat duh sneak ’puntop ’uh bu’d. ’E tu’n’e 
head en’ ’e look ’puntop me lukkuh somebody, ’cep’n suh [that] ’e 


252 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


yeye big lukkuh hawn owl’ eye. ’E look at me so positubble, uh t’ink 
mus’ be ’e duh haant, en’ uh dat ’f’aid ’e gwine t’row one spell ’puntop 
me, uh tu’n ’way me head. W’en uh look roun’ ’gen, ’e gone! Yuh 
come de dog’! Uh nebbuh see summuch dog! Dem full’ de road, en’ 
dem woice’ roll ’tell you nebbuh yeddy shishuh music. Dem 
cross’ de road, en’ dem gone! Attuh leetle wile, uh yeddy ’um duh 
giv dem toung een de gyaa’d’n uh ole Maussuh’ Clifton house wuh 
dem Nyankee bu’n down eenjurin’ uh de wah. De gyaa’d’n big ez 
uh cawnfiel’, en’ ’e full’ uh high rose bush duh climb up ’pun de tree, 
en’ all kind’uh briah en’ t’icket dey dey. Uh yeddy de dog’ mek uh 
sukkle roun’ de gyaa’d’n, den dem stop. Bimeby, yuh come de ole 
buck duh run puhzackly ’pun ’e back track, en’, w’en ’e git to de big 
road weh him lef’? me duh stan’up, uh t’awt at de fus’ ’e bin gwine 
jump ’puntop me, but ’e tu’n shaa’p roun’ en’ light down de road 
gwine Paa’kuh’ Ferry Cross-Road’ . . . Da’ duh de las’ uh shum, ~ 
en’ uh nebbuh yeddy ’um no mo’ attuh ’e done gone.”’ 

A patient phonetic analysis of this transcription will reveal all its 
mysteries, and hidden beneath the author’s spellings will be found 
regular phonetic developments of ordinary English words. ‘The dia- 
lect has, however, an unusually outlandish appearance, and in many 
respects it is different from the more familiar negro speech of Harris 
and Page. The name Gullah which has been applied to it and to the 
people who speak it, is a word of unknown etymological origin, 
nor are the racial origins of the Gullah negroes discoverable with 
reference to the particular regions of Africa from which they may have 
come. The question of African origins is of very little importance, 
however, since there is practically nothing in the recorded forms of 
Gullah speech which cannot be derived from English. Like the 
negro English of Harris and Page, Gullah speech is merely a debased 
dialect of English, learned by the negroes from the whites. The 
English speech which the whites probably used in addressing their 
savage slave captives was the much simplified, infantile English 
which superiors sometimes assume in addressing inferiors, or which 
with repetition and vociferation is used in trying to communicate 
with people who do not know the language. The English which lies 


LITERARY DIALECTS 253 


at the basis of the Gullah dialect must have been something like the 
English of an Irish labor boss directing a gang of Italian workmen. 
Similar forms of English appear in Beach-la-Mar and Pidgin Eng- 
lish. It is not improbable that the English of the original Gullah 
negroes was a kind of Pan-African English, used all along the slave 
coast, by Portuguese, Italian and other slave drivers as well as 
native Englishmen. 

The geographical limits of Gullah English among the negroes of 
the South have not been very definitely determined. It has been 
usually placed in the lower regions of Georgia and South Carolina, 
especially on the rice plantations of the coast. The culture of the 
Gullah negroes is in general very low, and probably their speech has 
not more fully conformed to the white man’s conventionally correct 
English because these negroes have always been field hands, low- 
class working people with few domestic contacts with the white pop- 
ulation. It is not likely that the native African characteristics of 
these negroes have stood in the way of their acquiring a better Eng- 
lish, but rather that they have learned as much from the white man 
as he gave them opportunity to learn. The Gullah dialect, therefore, 
has not taken on the character of conventional English speech so 
extensively as the Virginia negro dialect. ‘‘It recognizes no gender,” 
says Harris, Nights With Uncle Remus (1881), p. xxxili, ‘“‘and 
scorns the use of the plural number except accidentally. ‘E’ stands 
for ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘it,’ and ‘dem’ may allude to one thing, or may include 
a thousand.” A characteristic feature of the Gullah dialect is the 
adding of a vowel at the end of a word with final consonant, as in 
‘“‘T bin-a wait fer you; come-a ring-a dem bell. Wut mek-a (or 
mekky) you stay so?” ‘‘In such words as ‘back,’ ‘ax,’ a has the 
sound of ah,” and in vocabulary also the dialect is markedly indi- 
vidual. The consonant v becomes 6 in Gullah. Harris has illus- 
trated Gullah talk in the speech of Daddy Jack, who says berry for 
very, hab for have, and who exhibits numerous other traits of speech 
not found in the dialect of Uncle Remus and other upland negroes. 
Certain words in Gullah speech have developed an initial y, as for 
example, yeddy for heard, year for ear. A peculiar feature in syntax 


254 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


is the use of a word which originally was presumably the verb do as 
the general sign of verbal action, do thief meaning to steal, do stand up 
meaning standing up. In general the verb pays little attention to 
distinctions of person, tense and number. An unemphatic form of 
the demonstrative that takes a form variously recorded by different 
transcribers as suh [sa] or say, the emphatic form being dat. ““Wun- 
nuh, yunnuh, oonuh, unnuh, occasionally hoonuh, probably from one 
and another, is used for you and ye, usually in addressing more than 
one, though sometimes also in the singular,’’ Gonzales, p. 283. The 
word nyam means to eat, in various tense applications, and it is 
explained by J. G. Williams, De Ole Plantation (1895), p. vi, as 
being the same word as the noun yam, meaning sweet potato, the 
verb developing from the name of the common article of diet among 
the negroes. It is more probable, however, that the verb is a sort 
of sound imitation word, like present infantile yum-yum, meaning 
something good. These are only a few of a considerable number of 
Gullah characteristics that may be assembled from different literary 
transcriptions. When they are all used together, as in The Black 
Border, by Gonzales, the effect is extraordinary and perhaps some- 
what artificial. According to Williams, De Ole Plantation, p. v, 
Mr. Gonzales’s Gullah is as “‘perfect as it can be written,’’ but he 
adds that ‘‘the negro’s description of a jackass to a negro who had 
never seen a jackass: ‘E look same like mule, only mo so,’ is almost 
true of Mr. Gonzales’s Gullah.” 

That the Gullah dialect has not become the conventional literary 
negro dialect seems to be owing to the fact that Virginia plantation 
life has appealed more to the interest and sympathy of readers, there- 
fore has provided more useful literary material, than the life of the 
rice fields along the coast. In the earlier literary examples of negro 
dialect, however, this was not the case, and the barbarous Gullah 
was the customary form of negro dialect for use in literature until 
after the middle of the nineteenth century. Virginia life in the 
period following was more skilfully exploited in literature than the 
life of any other region in the South and thus has come to seem most 
typically Southern. 


LITERARY DIALECTS 255 


The older type of negro speech appears in the earliest American 
plays, one of the first negro characters in literature being Cudjo, in 
John Leacock’s Fall of British Tyranny, Philadelphia, 1776. Act 
IV, Scene iv, takes place on a British man-of-war, near Norfolk, 
Virginia, and Lord Kidnapper converses with Cudjo as follows: 


Kidnapper. Well, my brave blacks, are you come to list? 

Cudjo. Kas, massa Lord, you preazee. 

Kidnapper. How many are there of you? 

Cudjo. Twenty-two, massa. 

Kidnapper. Very well, did you all run away from your masters? 

Cudjo. Kas, massa Lord, eb’ry one, me too. 

Kidnapper. 'That’s clever; they have no right to make you 
slaves. I wish all the Negroes wou’d do the same. 
I’ll make ’em free—what part did you come from? 

Cudjo. Disse brack man, disse one, disse one, disse one, 
come from Hamton, disse one, disse one, come from 
Nawfok, me come from Nawfok too. 

Kidnapper. Very well, what was your master’s name? 

Cudjo. Me massa name Cunney Tomsee. 

Kidnapper. Colonel Thompson—eigh? 

Cudjo. Eas, massa, Cunney Tomsee. 

Kidnapper. Well then I'll make you a major—and what’s your 
name? 

Cudjo. Me massa cawra me Cudjo. 

Kidnapper. Cudjo?—very good—was you ever Christened, 
Cudjo? 

Cudjo. No, massa, me no crissen. 

Kidnapper. Well then Ill christen you—you shall be called 
major Cudjo Thompson... . 

Cudjo. Tankee, massa, gaw bresse, massa Kidnap. 


In another early American play, Murdock’s Triumphs of Love, 


Philadelphia, 1775, a character Sambo speaks a negro dialect with 
clear traces of Gullah talk in it. Looking at himself in the glass, he 


256 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


monologizes as follows, Reed, Realistic Characters, p. 56: ‘‘Sambo, 
what a gall call a pretty fellow. Dis wool of mine will curlee up so, 
can’t get him straight—dat all de fashion emong gemmen. Sambo 
tinks handsome. He berry ’complish’d too: he sing well; he dance 
well; he play fiddle well. He tink—he berry often tink why he 
slave to white man; why black folke sold like cow or horse. He 
tink de Great Somebody above no order tings so.”’ 

Samuel Low’s Politician Outwitted, New York, 1789, has a char- 
acter Cuffy, who speaks some short passages of negro dialect which 
have the common marks of Gullah speech. ‘‘Tankee, massa buck- 
araw,” he says, Act V, Se. i, ‘you gi me lilly lif [lift] me bery glad; 
—disa ting damma’ heby. [Puts down the trunk]—An de debelis 
crooka tone in a treet [crooked stones in the street] more worsa naw 
prickapear for poor son a bitch foot; and de cole pinch um so too.” 
The name Cuffy is recorded in the Century Dictionary as a general 
name for a negro in the South. It is said to be derived from Dutch 
Koff, in Guiana a common name for negroes and by custom applies 
to any one born on Friday. It is this name probably which has 
given rise to the phrase ‘“‘proud as Cuffy,” that is, proud as a negro 
tricked out in gaudy splendor. 

Benjamin Franklin has a short passage of negro dialect, which 
is of the Gullah variety, in his ‘‘Information to those who would 
remove to America,” Writings, Ed. Smythe, VIII, 606, probably 
written in 1782. ‘‘They are pleased,” the passage runs, ‘‘ with the 
observation of a Negro, and frequently mention it, that Boccarorra 
(meaning the white man) make de black man workee, make de Horse 
workee, make de Ox workee, make ebery thing workee; only de Hog. 
He, de hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep 
when he please, he libb like a Gentleman.” 

Excellent negro characterization appears in J. Robinson’s The 
Yorker's Stratagem, New York, 1792. In this play, the action of 
which takes place in the West Indies, Banana’s mother wants 
her son Banana to desert his wife Priscilla and marry a rich 


white girl. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


Mrs. Banana. 


Priscilla. 


LITERARY DIALECTS 257 


What is here fur do? You, Priscilla, you no hab 
de impurence of de debil, to make such a noise in 
a my house? 

I no hab right for come see my husband? 

Who da you husband? 

Banana da my husband. 

Who tell you so? 

Da, me tell myself so. 

Who you, you? 

Me, me, me, me, Priscilla. 

You mulatto Seasor, go tell de obaseer for come 
turn dis imperence hussy out of doors. 

Lord a mighty in a tap, me poor one in a buckra 
country; you eber been hear de like of dat—me 
da imperence hussy—eh—who da you? 

Me da lady. 

You da deble, look a like a lady; tigh, dirty no 
come dab me. 

Me hab plantation. 

You, ye lookee like a mumu; you mout like a 
bull-frog. 

Me hab nega like a you. 

You lye, you sesy yi, you mumu nose, you daddy 
mout chew tobacco, fire gun beem; me no care 
dat for you. 


The following ‘verses, entitled ‘‘True African Wit,’”’ occur in the 


New Hampshire 
Museum |Walpole, N. H.], July 26, 1796. 


and Vermont Journal: or The Farmer's Weekly 


“Old Cato, on his death bed lying, 


Worn out with work and almost dying, 
With patience heard his friend propose 
What bearers for him they had chose— 
There’s Cuff and Ceasar, Pomp and Plato, 
‘Dey will do bery well,’ quoth Cato, 

And Bantam Philips—now for t’other 
We must take Scipio, Bantam’s brother. 


258 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


‘T no like Scip,’ old Cato cries, 

‘Scip rascal, tell about me lies, 

And get me whip’d,’ ki, ’tis all one, 
Scip shall be bearer, Scip or none. 
‘Mind me,’ quoth Cato, ‘if dat cur, 
Dat Scip, come bearer, I wont tir!’ ’”’! 


A poem, ‘‘A Negro’s Lamentation,” written at Charleston, 
Monthly Mirror, III (1800), p. 398, contains only one or two words 
of negro speech, though it has several descriptive touches of negro 
life in Charleston. 

In Jonathan Postfree, by L. Beach, New York, 1807, Cesar in Act 
I, Sc. i, also speaks a Gullah type of negro dialect: ‘‘I no likee this 
massa Fopling—I don’t know what ole missee can see in him to make 
her likee him so much:—he no half so good as Jemmy Seamore ;— 
and younga missee Maria she know it;—she love one little finger of 
Jemmy more better than Fopling’s whole body—but I must holee 
my tongue—here he come— . . . Me no muchee fear the weight of 
your cane, massa, such a little tick [stick] no hurtee me much—.” 
The dialect is not very consistently maintained in this character, the 
most regular features being the addition of a vowel after words 
ending in a consonant, as in younga, workee, teachee, likee, and the 
change of v to 6, as in lobe for love, libe for live. The scene of this 
play is New York, and Cesar is servant to an old Mr. Ledger, a man 
of business in that city. The crude and childlike syntax and pro- 
nunciation of this negro dialect are indicative of a very different 
conception of the negro body servant from that which came to pre- 
vail later. It is now in the tradition of this type of character that he 
should exhibit even marks of courtliness and distinction in manner, 
should reflect some of the polish of the gentlemen of the old school 
in the service of whom his conduct was formed. 

The scene of A. B. Lindsley’s Love and Friendship, New York, 
1807, is laid in Charleston, South Carolina, where Gullah dialect 
would be appropriate to the locality. Among the characters are 
Harry, a black boy, and Phillis, a black woman. The following speech 


1 Through the courtesy of Mr. Clarence S. Brigham, Librarian of the American 
Antiquarian Society. 


LITERARY DIALECTS 259 


of Harry’s, Act I, Sc. 1, shows clearly enough the type of dialect which 
they speak: “Oh massa, you de terrible young man for true—you 
bin de bery debil wid de gal; dey often axa me how you do, and say 
you bin de man for dem; you no hab bashful like some younga buck- 
rah, you pull dere cap and hug ’em, so dey feel it tickle like all over, 
from de knee way long up to de head; and, for true, I tink dey bin 
like sich man de bess, for dey like for be tumel bout.” 

In Tabitha Tenney’s Female Quixotism, the first edition of which 
appeared about 1808, appears Scipio, who seems to be the first negro 
character developed at length in fiction. The scene of this novel is 
the neighborhood of Philadelphia. Several samples of Scipio’s 
speech are the following: 

‘But what devil put him in your head, Betty, to dress in masser 
croase, and go in de grobe?” Vol. I, Chap. XIV. “Gor bressa my 
soul‘ where you gown, you cap, you hanker, you every ting?” Vol 
I, Chap. XV. ‘‘Yes he be, Betty—he wife die, two tree year ago, 
and he darter all marry. Pose he want somebody wass he sirt, cook 
he vittles, make he bed; and so come gette you.’’’ 

Among the various dialect experiments in Cooper’s Pioneers 
(1823), German English, French English, Irish English, British Eng- 
lish and American English, occur samples also of negro English in the 
speech of Agamemnon. The negro dialect of this character is less 
elaborately developed than is the speech of the other dialect charac- 
ters, a little negro dialect in Cooper’s opinion apparently going a long 
way to supply all this kind of color that was needed. Cooper speaks 
of Agamemnon’s ‘‘Guinea blood,” therefore supposedly he was a 
Guinea negro, though by the first quarter of the nineteenth century 
the local origins of a particular negro must have been a matter of 
very uncertain inference. Whatever his origins may have been, 
Agamemnon does not speak a Virginia negro dialect, but something 
more like Gullah English, as in the following passage from Chapter 
XXXII: ‘O, Masser Richard! Masser Richard! such a ting! such 


1See also Hutton, Curiosities of the American Stage, pp. 95-96, for the negro on 
the stage, and F. P. Gaines, The Southern Plantation, A Study in the Development and 
the Accuracy of a Tradition (1924), p. 97. 


260 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


a ting! I nebber tink a could ’appen! nebber tink he die! O, Lor-a-gor! 
ain’t bury—keep ’em till Masser Richard get back—got a grabe 
BTU Dae ees 

There is an element of unconvincingness in this dialect, but per- 
haps not more so than in Cooper’s other attempts to write dialect, 
or in fact any forms of his supposedly humorous conversation. Negro 
dialect characters appear also in Cooper’s Satanstoe (1845), but the 
dialect is very thin and badly managed. 

It is interesting to note that Irving, in the Tales of a Traveller, 
1824, did not utilize an obvious opportunity to employ negro dialect. 
In the Adventure of the Black Fisherman the principal character is 
Black Sam, but he speaks no dialect, only conventional English. If 
one may hazard a guess to explain this fact, it may be that the only 
literary negro dialect which Irving had at hand being a very bar- 
barous Gullah dialect, he preferred to avoid dialect altogether to 
using an English so outlandish. 

In Haverhill, a novel by James A. Jones, New York, 1831, a negro, 
supposed to be from the Gold Coast, speaks as follows, Vol. II, p. 
190: “‘Me dig down where dey bury ole massa Billy Brimmer; fine 
bones braky, braky, get up whole airt [earth] full a bone—tigh-bone, 
solder-blade, teet, toe-bone; look-a-here, Sang, see wid him own 
ears.” Various other negro dialect passages occur in this story, 
the latter part of which is laid in the West Indies, but they are all 
much alike. It was probably through traders and travelers in the 
West Indies that all these early examples of negro dialect were derived. 

In The Yemassee (1835), by W. Gilmore Simms, a negro Hector 
figures largely in the story, the scene of which is laid in South Carolina, 
near Beaufort. ‘‘Da good dog dat,” says Hector, Chap. XLI, ‘“‘dat 
same Dugdale. But he hab reason—Hector no gib ’em meat for 
not’ing. Spaniar no l’arn ’em better, and de Lord hab mercy ’pon 
dem Ingin, eff he once stick he teet in he troat. He better bin in de 
fire, for he neber leff off, long as he kin kick. Hark—da good dog, 
dat same Dugdale. Wonder way massa pick up da name for ’em; 
speck he Spanish—in English, he bin Dogdale.”’ Hector also uses 
enty for haven’t you, yerry for hear, and wm as a generalized pronoun. 


LITERARY DIALECTS 261 


Paulding’s Dutchman’s Fireside (1831) contains several negro 
characters, servants in Hudson river Dutch families, but their dialect, 
of the older grotesque type, is not highly developed. A few passages 
of negro speech also appear in Westward Ho (1832), but none of any 
extent. In both of these tales Indian characters appear as well as 
negro, but the dialect of both is mostly puerile English, with very little 
red or black color in it. 

Even in Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes (1835), the work of a pro- 
fessed realist, negro dialect is only meagerly represented, the following, 
p. 48, being typical of the occasional brief passage: ‘‘Fedder fly all 
ober de buckera-man meat, he come bang me fo’ true—No massa, 
I mighty sorry for your wife, but I no cutty chicken open.”’ 

A good deal of Gullah negro dialect occurs in Caroline Gilman’s 
Recollections of a Southern Matron (1837), a novel descriptive of man- 
ners and society in South Carolina. It is interesting to observe that 
Mrs. Gilman thinks it necessary to apologize ‘‘as a matter of taste 
for the frequent introduction of the negro dialect,’ but she explains 
that it “has only been done when essential to the development of 
individual character.”’ 

The action of Poe’s Gold Bug, published in 1839, takes place at 
Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. In the story a 
negro servant, Jupiter, speaks dialect, though the dialect is not very 
elaborate, consisting mainly in the change of v to b, of voiceless th 
to t, of voiced th to d, and in the generalized use of certain pronouns. 
Certain archaisms occur, like sartain, mought, ventur, which possibly 
may have been derived by Poe from a not very discriminating recol- 
lection of New England literary dialect. As is apparent from the 
following passage, however, Jupiter speaks not a Virginian, but some- 
thing like a Gullah dialect: ‘‘Him rotten, massa, sure nuff .. . but 
no so berry rotten as mought be. Mought ventur’ out leetle way ’pon 
de limb by myself, dat’s true.” 

In the decade before the Civil War a considerable body of slavery 
and anti-slavery fiction was published in which negro characters 
figured more or less, though negro dialect was much less skilfully 
and generally used in this literature than one might expect. Very 


262 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


often it was intentionally avoided in order not to impair the dignity 
of anargument. Interest in the negro at this time was not picturesque 
and realistic but controversial. The most famous negro character 
in fiction was presented to the public when Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin was published in 1852. There is a certain amount of dialect 
in this novel, but not in the speech of Uncle Tom. Even in familiar 
conversation, Uncle Tom expresses himself with very little dialect 
color, hardly more than enough to enable the reader to place his 
speech on the low colloquial level. This is one of the various devices 
employed by Mrs. Stowe to keep Tom in a central and dignified 
position in her story. Other characters upon whom the weight of 
doctrine rested more lightly were allowed to speak more dialectally. 
Thus Uncle Tom’s wife, Aunt Chloe, makes use of as complete a negro 
dialect as Mrs. Stowe had at her command. But the illusion even 
of Aunt Chloe’s speech is very imperfect. It is, in fact, New England 
literary dialect, slightly adapted to a Southern climate. ‘‘Good, 
plain, common cookin’ Jinny ’ll do,” says Aunt Chloe, Chapter IV 
‘‘__make a good pone o’ bread,—bile her taters fa’r,—her corn-cakes 
isn’t extra, not extra now, Jinny’s corn-cakes isn’t, but then they’s 
fa’r,—but Lor, come to de higher branches, and what can she do? 
Why, she makes pies,—sartin she does; but what kinder crust? 
Can she make your real flecky paste, as melts in your mouth, and lies 
all up like a puff? Now, I went over thar when Miss Mary was gwine 
to be married, and Jinny, she jest showed me de weddin-pies. Jinny 
and I is good friends, ye know. Inever said nothin’; but go’long, Mas’r 
George! Why, I shouldn’t sleep a wink for a week, if I had a batch 
of pies like dem ar. Why, dey warn’t no ’count ’t all.’ For veri- 
similitude this speech would be better adapted, both in language and 
in content, to the ‘‘pie belt”’ of the North than to the cotton fields 
of the sunny South. Assisted by a red turban and charcoal it might 
pass, but as literary workmanship, it is crude. 

When by proclamation the negro became a citizen of the United 
States, it was perhaps a necessary consequence to this great event 
that he should, at least in literary representations of his speech, utter 
his thoughts in a language more like that of the body of American 


LITERARY DIALECTS 263 


citizens than was the Gullah literary dialect. In reality, as the 
opportunities of conventional education have been opened to him, 
the negro has acquired conventional English speech with as much 
facility and as perfectly as any of the numerous races and classes 
that have entered the American public schools. A negro dialect 
markedly different from the dialect speech of white people would 
therefore seem too remote from the real speech of negroes to be 
useful for literary purposes. For these reasons, probably, when 
local color became the literary fashion in the decades following the 
Civil War, the type of negro who figured in the literature of the time 
was not the sea-islander, speaking an outlandish gibberish, but the 
plantation darkie, echoing in his own way the courtly address and 
manner of his white superiors.! 

Negro dialect characters as they appear in early American plays 
and novels do not owe anything to imitation of similar characters in 
British writing. They are apparently the result of direct observation, 
and for this reason one might expect that West Indian and coast 
negroes served as models rather than the plantation negroes because 
the early lines of travel and communication made the West Indian 
negroes and the coast negroes of South Carolina better known than 
the negroes of the interior. It was not until the time of the Civil 
War that the Virginia negro became a familiar folklore figure. 

Perhaps the earliest example of negro dialect in English occurs in 
De Foe, The Family Instructor, Vol. II, Part II, Dialogue IV (1715). 
In this dialogue, a little negro boy, about fourteen years old, is servant 
to a white boy. The negro boy, named Toby, has been brought 
from Barbados, and “‘though born in that island, spoke but imperfect 
English.”’ 


Toby. Me be born at Barbadoes. 

Boy. Who lives there, Toby? 

Toby. There lives white mans, white womans, negree mans, 
negree womans, just so as live here. 


Boy. What and not know God? 


1See F. P. Gaines, The Southern Plantation, pp. 21 ff., for some further examples 
of nineteenth-century negro dialect. 


264 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Toby. Yes, the white mans say God prayers,—no much know 
God. 

Boy. And what do the black mans do? 

Toby. They much work, much work,—no say God prayers, not 
at all. 

Boy. What work do they do, Toby? 

Toby. Makee the sugar, makee the ginger,—much great work, 
weary work, all day, all night. 


Toby. Yes, yes, teaché me to read; pray teaché me. 


In the second part of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe has a great deal of 
the talk of native South American Indians, but it is very little dif- 
ferent from his negro English. ‘‘But how you makee me know,” 
says one of the Indians, ‘‘that God teachee them to write that book.” 
Later Defoe remarks that ‘‘it is to be observed that all these natives 
[of South America], as also those of Africa, when they learn English, 
always add two e’s at the end of the words where we use one; and 
they place the accent upon them, as makée, takée, and the like; 
nay, I could hardly make Friday leave it off, though at last he did.” 
It would seem from this that Defoe supposed that a tendency to add 
a final e was born in a savage’s blood and came out when he tried 
to speak English. In all probability, however, the savages heard their 
English masters pronounce the final e and merely imitated them. 
In De Foe’s Infe of Colonel Jacque (1722) a great deal is said about 
the negroes of Virginia and Maryland; but only a few words of negro 
dialect are given, Works, ed. Maynadier, VI, 210: 

“He shook his head, and made signs that he was muchee sorree, 
as he called it. ‘And what will you say or do,’ said I, ‘if I should 
prevail with the great master to pardon you? I have a mind to go 
and see if I can beg for you.’ He told me he would lie down, let 
me kill him. ‘Me will,’ says he, ‘run, go, fetch, bring for you as long 
as me live.’”’ 

Of the same date as these passages from De Foe is another in 
Cotton Mather’s Angel of Bethesda, a tract on inoculation for small- 


LITERARY DIALECTS 265 


pox written about 1721. Mather quotes the words of his negro slave 
Onesimus, who had been presented to him by his parishioners and 
who had been inoculated for the smallpox: 

“T have since mett with a considerable Number of these Africans, 
who all agree in One Story; That in their Countrey grandy-many 
dy of the Small-Pox; But now they learn This Way: People take 
Juice of Small-Pox; and Cutty-skin, and Putt in a Drop; then by’nd 
by a little Sicky, Sticky: then very few little things like Small-Pox, 
and no body dy of it; and no body have Small-Pox any more.”’! 

Mather calls Onesimus ‘‘a Guramantee-Servant of my own,”’ 
and elsewhere he remarks that ‘‘the more plainly, brokenly, and blun- 
deringly, and like Ideots, they [the negroes] tell their Story, it will be 
with reasonable Men, but the much more credible.’”’ But Mather’s 
negro, his testimony and his speech, were much ridiculed by con- 
temporary critics. It was perhaps the first time the critics had ever 
seen a record of negro speech, as indeed it is the earliest example in 
America that this writer has discovered. 


Though Uncle Remus and characters like Page’s Marse Chan 
may be said to be classic literary representations of the American 
negro, expressing himself in his own dialect, no similarly represen- 
tative Indian character can be placed by the side of these black men. 
A good Indian, speaking in character, has never been achieved. 
Ordinarily the Indian in the thrilling fiction in which he frequently 
appears is presented as speaking very little, his conversation consist- 
ing mainly of the exclamation Ugh, Ugh, enriched with some such 
statement as Me heap big Indian, or a request for firewater. In the 
more dignified style of writing, he speaks entirely out of character. 
Hiawatha appears only in poetry, and perhaps poetic license justifies 
the exalted treatment he receives. The same excuse cannot be 
made for Cooper’s Indians. But apparently Cooper made slight 
effort to provide his Indian characters with an appropriate speech, 
like his other distinctively American creations. In The Pioneers 


1 See Kittredge, Lost Works of Cotton Mather, in Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. 
Society, XLV, 431 (1912). 


266 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


(1823), in the speech of Chingachgook no attempt at dialect is made 
at all, and in fact the Indian speaks more conventional English than 
Leatherstocking or Hurry Harry. At one point, Chapter VII, the 
author says that the ‘‘Mohegan now spoke, in tolerable English,” 
but the words that actually appear in the record are the following: 
‘The children of Miquon do not love the sight of blood, and yet the 
Young Eagle has been struck by the hand that should do no evil.” 
This is the oratorical style of the speech of Logan, and Chingachgook 
is allowed to speak in no other manner. He is kept dignified by 
being made unreal. 

In some of his other novels Cooper attempted to treat the speech 
of Indian characters more realistically. In Satanstoe (1845), for 
example, Susquesus speaks as follows: 

‘Nuttin’ see farther than Injin. Red man fly high, too. See 
from salt lake to sweet water. Know ebbery t’ing in wood. ‘Tell 
him nuttin’ he don’t know.” “Red man nebber measure land so. 
He p’int with finger, break bush down, and say, ‘There, take from 
that water to that water.’” 

In Redskins (1846), a sequel to Satanstoe, similar crude Indian 
dialect is to be found which differs not at all from Cooper’s negro 
dialect. In Chap. VIII, Cooper uses the word Sago, and describes 
it as ‘‘that familiar semi-Indian salutation.” In a footnote he adds 
that ‘‘the colonists caught a great many words from the Indians,” 
and that “‘a sort of limited lingua franca has grown up in the country 
that everybody understands.’ But the only words Cooper mentions, 
besides Sago in the text, are a few in this note, moccasin, squaw, pap- 
poose, tomahawk and Yankees. If this lingua franca existed, of which 
Cooper speaks, certainly Cooper made little effort to use it. 

The Indian never had a fair chance to be treated in literature as 
a human being. By the time Indians began to figure in literature, 
they were idealized out of all recognition. Indian characters appear 
in a number of early American plays of the period of the Revolution, 
but in all of them, the Indians speak like Roman senators. The 
dignity of the Indian seemed in some way to involve the dignity of 
the new America. Always more or less aloof, in his daily surround- 


LITERARY DIALECTS 267 


ings the Indian rarely lived in intimate relations with white neigh- 
bors. He did not become a house or body servant, like the negro, 
did not adapt himself to the conditions of the white man’s life in 
such a way as to make him an object of personal sympathetic con- 
cern to the latter. The relations of the Indian to the white man were 
moreover seldom relieved by any humorous attachments. In his 
happier and original state the Indian may have been dignified and 
impressive, in his degraded condition he was often disgusting, but 
at no time does he seem to have been amusing. In this respect also 
he has differed from the negro, who from the beginning has been an 
unfailing source of entertainment to his white brethren. Nor has the 
Indian ever taken enthusiastic advantage of such opportunities as 
he had to learn English. Too proud to make himself ridiculous by 
inadequate attempts to speak an unknown language, he preferred 
either to remain silent or to transact necessary negotiations through 
an interpreter. For these reasons, though the bad Indian might be 
treated with some degree of unpleasant realism, the good Indian has 
not figured largely in American literature, except in literature of a 
poetic or oratorical kind. Thus an accepted and recognized Indian 
dialect for literary uses has never been developed, because there was 
no authentic dialect in the practice of Indians in their relations to 
white men. Indians who learned English learned it so well that 
comparatively little Indian color was left in their spoken English. 
Those who did not learn English remained silent in the presence 
of whites, earning for themselves the frequently applied epithets 
sullen, morose and impassive, all terms inapplicable to the Indian in 
his natural surroundings. 

A certain degree of antiquarian interest nevertheless attaches to 
the attempts that have been made from time to time to record the 
English of Indians. These attempts are not numerous, nor are the 
records in which they occur extensive. White men frequently stud- 
ied the speech of the Indians, thougb not to record the Indian’s Eng- 
lish but his native tongue. Examples of “Indian talk” are conse- 
quently not easy to find, and additions to the citations that follow 
may be counted as discoveries. 


268 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


In the Present State of New England, by a merchant of Boston, 
1675, p. 12, quoted by Kittredge, p. 354, we read that ‘‘About the 
15th of August, Captain Mosely with sixty Men, met with a com- 
pany, judged about three hundred Indians, in a plain place where 
few Trees were, and on both sides preparations were making for a 
Battle; all being ready on both sides to fight, Captain Mosely plucked 
off his Periwig, and put it into his Breeches, because it should not 
hinder him in fighting. As soon as the Indians saw that, they fell a 
Howling and Yelling most hideously, and said, ‘‘Umh, wmh, me no 
stawmerre fight Engis mon, Engis mon got two hed, Engis mon got two 
hed; if me cut off un hed, he got noder, a put on beder as dis.”’ Kittredge 
remarks that ‘‘me no stawmerre fight Engis mon”’ is an oracle that 
defies interpretation. But stawmerre is evidently the same word as 
that which occurs in the passage from Ames’s Almanack, 1730, 
quoted below, and it obviously means understand. Whether it is 
merely a corruption of English understand, or is a modification of a 
genuine Indian word, as seems more probable, only one versed in the 
phonology of American Indian dialects should venture to say. 

In the Present State of New England, p. 13, occurs also the anec- 
dote of an Indian who drank the blood of his friend who had been 
executed: “Being asked his reason therefor, his answer was, Umh, 
umh nu, Me stronger as I was before, me be so strong as me and he 
too, he be ver strong Man fore he die.’’ Another anecdote by the 
same writer, p. 14, relates the story of the rescue of an Englishman 
who had been left for dead; an Indian found him, took him up and 
said, ‘‘Umh, umh poo Ingisman, me save you life, me take yow to 
Captain Mosee.”’ 

Certain passages of Indian dialect in verse occur in Benjamin 
Thompson’s New England Crisis, 1676, quoted by Kittredge, p. 357. 
In this poem King Philip is described with animosity as delivering 


the following oration: 


‘“‘“My friends, our Fathers were not half so wise 
As we our selves, who see with younger eyes; 
They sel our land to english man, who teach 
Our nation all so fast to pray and preach. 


LITERARY DIALECTS 269 


Of all our country they enjoy the best, 

And quickly they intend to have the rest. 

This no wunnegin; so big matchit law, 

Which our old fathers fathers never saw, 

These english make, and we must keep them too, 
Which is too hard for us or them to doe. 

We drink, we so big whipt; but english they 

Go sneep, no more, or else a little pay. 

Me meddle Squaw, me hang’d; our fathers kept 
What Squaws they would, whither they wakt or slept. 
Now, if you’le fight, Ile get you english coats, 
And wine to drink out of their Captains throats.’ 


“This was assented to, and, for a close 
He strokt his smutty beard and curst his foes.” 


Another passage of six lines of verse in Indian dialect containing 
genuine Indian words mingled with transformed English words, 
is contained in Ames’s Almanack, for March, 1730, see The Essays, 
Humor and Poems of Nathaniel Ames, ed. Sam Briggs, Cleveland 
(Ohio), 1891, p. 66. It calls for some editing in punctuation and for 
some ingenuity in interpretation, though there can be little doubt 
as to its general meaning. The passage, very brief and apparently 
the only one of its kind in the Almanack, is as follows: 


‘“‘Cunkeechah Netop? what News you speak to me? 
Muffy good news; what? you no Stommonee? 
By by come Elwipes much as me can wish 
Tink nuxt Week den me shan heb it Bish 
Where is Tat prace you speak to me? Me ashk it 
Me tink some Pokes he cann his Lame Namaskitt.”’ 


Under March, 1735, in this Almanack, we are informed that ‘‘at this 
time of the year Namasket River is a Market Place.” The theme 
of the verses in the Almanack is thus that event so important in the 
colonial New England settlements, the annual coming of the alewives. 
In a note to this passage, p. 69, the editor of Ames’s Almanack gives 
the following as a free rendering: 

“The aborigine having saluted Netop (Englishman) with an 
inquiry of surprise, continues: What news you speak to me? mighty 
good news; what? don’t you understand me? By and by Alewives 


270 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


(a sort of fish) will come, as much as I could wish. I think next week 
then I shall have them sure. Where is the place, you ask me? I 
answer, I think some folks call its name Namasket (river).”’ 

There is room for difference of opinion concerning some parts of 
this translation, for example, the translation of Bish, line 4, by sure. 
It seems more likely that Bish is merely the Indian pronunciation of 
fish. It will be observed that the labial continuants become stops 
in this dialect, v becoming p in Elwipes, b in heb, and f becoming p 
in Pokes. The lin English words appears as n in shan, 1. 4, and cann 
for call, 1. 6, but as r in prace, |. 5, and conversely n appears as / in 
Lame, 1.6. The solution of these puzzles in sound correspondence 
must be left to the special student of the American Indian languages, 
but if one may hazard a statement based on the slight evidence 
afforded by the passages quoted in this chapter, a certain degree of 
regularity manifested itself in the sound substitutions which the In- 
dians made in their attempts to pronounce English words. 

A curious historical interest attaches to a fragment of Indian 
dialect extracted by Kittredge, p. 333, from the Farmer’s Almanack 
for 1797. The statement in the Almanack is as follows: 

‘An Indian who was appointed a Justice of the Peace, issued the 
following Warrant.—Me High Howder, yu constable, yu deputy, 
best way yu look um Jeremiah Wicket, strong yu take um, fast yu 
hold um, quick yu bring um before me. Captain Howder.”’ 

By an elaborate collection of evidence, Kittredge shows that this 
warrant was not a piece of fiction, that it rests on a basis of fact, and 
that very probably it had persisted in New England tradition from 
the second half of the seventeenth century. 

In Madam Knight’s Journals (1704-5), pp. 37-38, occurs an 
anecdote containing both negro and Indian dialect, though the dis- 
tinguishing marks of neither are numerous. According to the tale, 
a negro slave in New Haven stole a hogshead from his master and 
gave or sold it to an Indian. The Indian then sold it, whereupon the 
theft was discovered and the Indian brought to trial. The judge 
happened at the time to be in his field gathering his pumpkins, with 
a brother justice. ‘‘Their worships cann’t proceed in form without 


LITERARY DIALECTS 271 


a Bench: whereupon they Order one to be imediately erected, which, 
for want of fitter materials, they made with pompions—which being 
finished, down setts their worships, and the malefactor call’d, and by 
the Senior Justice Interrogated after the following manner. You 
Indian why did You steal from this man? You sho’dn’t do so—it’s 
a Grandy wicked thing to steal. Hol’t Hol’t, cryes Justice Jun’, 
Brother, you speak negro to him. J’le ask him. You sirrah, why 
did you steal this man’s Hoggshead. Hoggshead? (replys the In- 
dian), me no stomany. No? says his Worship; and pulling off his 
hatt, Patted his own head with his hand, sais Tatapa—You, Tatapa 
—you; all one this. Hoggshead all one this. Hah! says Netop, 
now me stomany that. Whereupon the Company fell into a great fitt 
of Laughter, even to Roreing.”’ 

Ponteach (1766) by Robert Rogers, ed. Nevins, p. 181, has several 
short passages of slightly broken Indian talk—How much you ask 
per quart for this strong Rum?—but for the most part the characters 
are heroic and speak elegantly. 

A few interesting passages occur in An Account of the Remarkable 
Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith, written by 
himself, Lexington [Kentucky] 1799, reprinted in the Ohio Valley 
Historical Series, No. 5. Col. Smith was a prisoner among the Indians 
from 1755 to 1759. During his captivity he kept a journal, from which 
his book was made. ‘‘On my return to camp,” he says, p. 20, describ- 
ing his life as a captive, ‘‘I observed a large piece of fat meat: the 
Delaware Indian that could talk some English, observed me looking 
earnestly at this meat, and asked me what meat you think that is? 
I said I supposed it was bear meat; he laughed and said, ho, all one 
fool you, beal now elly pool, and pointing to the other side of the camp, 
he said look at that skin, you think that beal skin? I went and lifted 
the skin, which appeared like an ox hide: he then said, what skin 
you think that? I replied that I thought it was a buffaloe hide; he 
laughed and said, you fool again, you know nothing, you think buffaloe 
that colo? I acknowledged I did not know much about these things, 
and told him I never saw a buffaloe, and that I had not heard what 
color they were. He replied by and by you shall see gleat many buffaloe; 


272 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


He now go to gleat lick. That skin no buffaloe skin, that skin buck-elk 
skin.’ The main phonetic characteristic of this dialect is the sub- 
stitution of l for r. 

Heckewelder, the Pennsylvania missionary to the Indians, gives 
the following speech of an Indian, Kittredge, p. 362, dating it 
about 1770. The substance of the speech is the ineffectiveness 
of the English as contrasted with the Indian manner of choosing 
Wives: 

‘‘White man court,—court,—may be one whole year!—may be 
two year before he marry !—well!—may be then got very good wife— 
but may be not!—may be very cross! Well now, suppose cross! scold 
so soon as get awake in the morning! scold all day! scold until sleep!— 
all one; he must keep him! White people have law forbidding 
throwing away wife, be he ever so cross! must keep him always! 
Well! how does Indian do?—Indian when he see industrious Squaw, 
which he like, he go to him, place his two forefingers close aside each 
other, make two look like one—look Squaw in the face—see him 
smile—which is all one he say Yes! so he take him home—no danger 
he be cross! no! no! Squaw know too well what Indian do if he cross! 
throw him away and take another! Squaw love to eat meat! no 
husband! no meat! Squaw do everything to please husband! he do 
the same to please Squaw! live happy!’ This speech may be Indian 
in sentiment, but very little Indian flavor is to be detected in the 
language of it. Like most later literary visions of Indian talk, it is 
merely crude and childish English, the English of the half-breed and 
the hanger-on about missions and white settlements. Not much 
literary skill is required to write this kind of dialect and very little 
direct observation of speech. Abundant examples of it will be found 
in nineteenth century fiction and books of travel, but for genuine 
echoes of the Indian-speaking voice, we seem to be dependent upon 
such occasional scraps of dialect as have been preserved in the 
almanacs and other records of the Colonial period. 

Indian characters appear in Charles Brockden Brown’s Hdgar 
Huntly (1799), but they do not speak in dialog, all the narrative 
being given in the first person by the narrator. 


LITERARY DIALECTS eee 


The following song, by the Indian maiden Chicka, from a musical 
entertainment, The Catawba Travelers: or Kiew Netka’s Return, 
presented at Sadler’s Wells in 1797, indicates the existence at least 
of a type of song similar to the later ‘“‘coon” song: 


“‘Chicka like Sailor Man, 
Tom like’a Chicka too; 
He come home, he shakee hand, 
And me say how dye do? 
Tom no to Ningland go, 
Doll nibber come so far—den— 
Ickle Chicka happy Squaw, 
With a jolly Tar!— 


“Tom Shoot a Cockatoo, 
Chicka put him in a pot,— 
Tom fill a Wamessou, 
And pura till he hot; 
Him call for Grog, a ho! 
Me drinka swipe galore ;—hee—ee! 
Ickle Chicka happy Squaw, 
Wid a jolly Tar. 


“But, Doll ’o Wapping is she dead, 
Chicka, den a Ningland goes,— 
Yellow fedder on a head, 
And Silber at ee Nose; 
Gold ring on ebery Toe, 
Blue Cheek and shinee hair;—Oh la! 
Ickle Chicka pretty Squaw, 
For a jolly Tar!’ 


Through the courtesy of Miss Dorothy Dondore. 


STYLE 


The historian who attempts to discuss any aspect of style finds 
his first difficulty in the lack of an accepted definition of the subject. 
Style is a Je ne sais quoi, the man himself, and a thousand other 
things. But perhaps the real character of style is best revealed in 
this very multiplicity of definitions. Style is a quality which in the 
end reduces to individual variation, therefore cannot be summed up 
in a theoretical generalization. There is in truth a great similarity 
in the endeavors which have been made to define dialects and the 
endeavors which have been made to define style. The final analysis 
in the study of dialects carries one back to the individual as the only 
reality. General dialects, whether regional or social, are merely 
abstract summaries of details selected from the habits of speakers 
who have, among their countless differentiations, certain relatively 
few habits in common which make these speakers seem homo- 
geneous when attention is directed specially to their similarities. 
So it is with style, and the various literary styles of a language may 
be classed merely among its dialect manifestations. 

In America, as in any country employing a highly developed 
idiom, there is and has been an infinity of ways of expression in 
language. Only here and there can the student observe a more or 
less generalized tendency in these habits of expression, and these 
habits, viewed in perspective, may be made the basis for a history of 
style. Whether stylistic impulses in America have brought something 
new and altogether unique into existence is obviously a question 
that permits of no simple and categorical answer. But certainly it 
is not possible to detach American writing with ease from the whole 
body of literature written in the English language and to say that by 
the possession of this and of that precise quality, it has established 
itself in its specific character. It is a perilous adventure to attempt 


the description of anything so subtle and diffused as a general manner 
274 


STYLE 275 


of expression. If American style has an essential and distinguishing 
quality, it does not have it as the clear result of conscious choice and 
intention. It must be something deeply hidden. In a recent stimu- 
lating discussion,! an endeavor is made to bring to light this hidden 
quality by contrasting American with British style. The essential 
quality of British style, as here conceived, is something that may be 
best described as structural. In British writing the thought and its 
expression are considered as elaborated together into a compact and 
mutually dependent unity which gives to this writing a kind of or- 
ganic architectural character. And this standard and method of 
literary expression, it is assumed, come to the Englishman from his 
respectful study not only of the classics of Greek and Latin, but also 
of the classics of his own literature. American style, on the contrary, 
rests not upon a basis of structural organization, but is more a matter 
of points, of successive brilliant moments, of verbal ingenuities and 
surprises. It is a restless, rapid, animated style, a sparkling if not 
a profound style. In short, American style, in this study, is taken to 
be a style of wit, whereas British style is a style of thought and 
constructive understanding. 

That this characterization of American style applies not inaptly 
to many American writers is beyond question. That it distinguishes 
recent American writers markedly from recent British writers is not 
so certain. For the purpose of comparison, manifestly it would be 
meaningless to compare Burke or Macaulay with American writers of 
the present day. Like must be compared with like. The tendency 
of all English writing, within the past two or three generations, has 
been to move away from the formal structure of the older classics 
towards a simpler, more rapid and flexible stylistic method. This 
applies to British as well as to American writers. Formal structure 
in all modern English writing tends to be replaced by other more 
lightly moving qualities, and so far as the comparison between British 
and American writing is concerned, perhaps it may be said that the 
latter has only traveled a little faster than the former. Certainly 
when one looks back a generation or two in America, one finds few 


1 American Style, by Stuart Sherman, in Points of View (1924), pp. 153-170. 


276 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


striking marks of difference between writing in England and writing 
in America. A perspective even of a short duration levels many 
distinctions. 


If a new soul and a new style were born in America, one finds it 
difficult to settle upon a fixed date for this important event. It 
remains a matter of debate who is rightly to be called the first Ameri- 
can man of letters. Early colonial writers like Captain John Smith 
and the Puritan recorders and historians were neither Americans 
nor men of letters in any just sense of these terms. Not until one 
approaches the Revolution in the third quarter of the eighteenth 
century can one reasonably speak of writers in America as being 
American. Of these first American writers, the chief historical 
place is unquestionably occupied by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin 
was much more than a man of letters, and indeed has come to be 
regarded in the latter light not because he made a direct bid for 
literary fame but, like Bacon, whom he in several respects resembled, 
because his larger activities could not be carried on without the 
assistance of a literary method and technic. After many generations 
of Americans have lived, Franklin’s own personal life also seems in 
many respects prophetic of what a definitely typical literary American 
was to be. In rough outline the story of the poor printer’s boy who 
emerges by rigorous self-discipline and native wit into the bright light 
of public success might serve for numerous American authors. 

American in spirit and in choice of theme Franklin may have been, 
but when one examines the details of his literary method, one finds 
no peculiar Americanism in style. It could not have been otherwise 
with the spiritual background which Franklin has described near the 
beginning of his Autobiography. ‘‘From a child,” he says, ‘I was 
fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was 
ever laid out in books. Pleased with Pilgrim’s Progress, my first 
collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes. I 
afterwards sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton’s Historical 
Collections. . . . My father’s library consisted chiefly of books in 
polemic divinity, most of which I read . . . Plutarch’s Lives there 


STYLE 277 


was in which I read abundantly and I still think that time spent to 
great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe’s, called an Essay 
on Projects, and another of Dr. Mather’s, called Essays to do Good, 
which perhaps gave me a form of thinking that had an influence on 
some of the principal future events of my life.” After some excur- 
sions into the field of poetry, from which he was rescued by the 
ridicule of his father, Franklin devoted himself to prose writing. He 
describes a bad habit of disputatiousness which he had fallen into, 
caught by reading his father’s religious books, and how he was 
brought to the realization of a more urbane manner of writing. 
‘About this time, I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It 
was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, 
read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought 
the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With 
this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the 
sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, with- 
out looking at the book, try’d to complete the papers again, by ex- 
pressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been 
expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. 
Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of 
my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of 
words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought 
I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making 
verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, 
but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for 
the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of search- 
ing for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, 
and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and 
turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well 
forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes 
jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks 
endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form 
the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me 
method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work 
afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended 


278 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain 
particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve 
the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might 
possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I 
was extreamly ambitious.”’ 

It has seemed worth while calling attention again to these well- 
known passages in Franklin’s Autobiography because in kind they 
might stand for the normal experience of almost any American man 
of letters from the time they were written to the present day. What 
Franklin aspired to become was ‘‘a tolerable English writer,’ and he 
conceived that the best method of attaining this end was to disci- 
pline himself in the best literary traditions of the English language. 
The thought probably never occurred to Franklin that to be a true 
American writer he must renounce the whole or any part of British 
cultural tradition. Franklin’s concern in writing was primarily with 
content, and so it is with every serious writer. Language is merely 
the mechanical means to convey the content effectively. If there- 
fore one had at hand an adequate mechanical means, as any writer 
of English was convinced he had in Franklin’s day in the language of 
Shakspere and Milton and Addison, only a pedant or theorist would 
have refused to use this means. ‘‘Nicenesse in wordes,” says the 
Preface to the King James translation of the Bible, ‘‘was alwayes 
counted the next step to trifling.”’ So the first writers of English in 
America thought when it came to the practical question of using or 
refusing the heritage of literary expression common to all whose 
native speech is English. Their purpose was not to escape the lit- 
erary traditions of the past, but to utilize and to surpass them. The 
spirit of their endeavor was ambitiously expressed in the following 
lines from one of Samuel Low’s Poems (1800), p. 135: 

‘“‘The time will come, soon may that time arrive, 
When Roman greatness shall in us revive; 


When Homer’s genius here sublime shall soar, 
And a new Virgil grace this western shore.”’ 


Homer and Virgil in these lines merely express figuratively respect for 
the accredited achievements of the past in English literature. 


STYLE 279 


Acceptance of the traditions of good literature by American 
writers after the Revolution did not carry with it, however, a con- 
fessed and absolute submission to older models. On the contrary, 
critical opinion at least favored a healthy expansion in the use of the 
English language in America. In this respect as in many others 
Noah Webster was one of the leaders of opinion. It should be re- 
membered, however, that what Webster advocated was not the con- 
struction of a new language in America, but the use of English as it 
already existed on American soil for all purposes, colloquial or lit- 
erary. In other words, Webster thought that the ‘‘ Federal English” 
which he advocated could find for its basis a better foundation in the 
English actually spoken and current among the “yeomanry” of New 
England than in the English of England, or even in the books writ- 
ten in the traditional language of England. But this was a theo- 
retical rather than a practical notion on the part of Webster. It 
had some following, however, and apparently was one of the tenets 
of the Philological Society, which flourished but briefly during the 
year 1788. Among the more important members of this society 
were Josiah Ogden Hoffman, William Dunlap, the dramatist, and 
Noah Webster, all persons of distinction. Others, however, as 
Jeremy Belknap, see Ford, Notes, I, 185, treated the Society with 
scorn. It formed a part of the procession in New York to celebrate 
the adoption of the Constitution by ten states, see Webster’s Diary, 
July 23, 1788. The procession was ‘‘very brilliant but fatiguing,” 
says Webster, adding, ‘‘I formed a part of the Philological Society, 
whose flag and uniform black dress made a very respectable figure.’ 
It is difficult now to call to life again the enthusiasm for a new Fed- 
eral English which gave to these patriotic representatives of it a kind 
of symbolical place in a great state procession. It was, however, an 
enthusiasm of sentiment, not of reason. Even Webster, who was 
the most devoted supporter of the cause, put very little of his theory 
into practice when it came actually to writing. In his dictionaries 
he inserted a few New England local words, but his own writings 
are as Addisonian as those of Franklin. Webster wrote well, but 
he did so not because of, but in spite of, his theories. The judgment 


280 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


of Jefferson, Writings, ed. Ford, VIII, 80, expressed in 1801, that 
Webster was ‘‘a mere pedagogue, of very limited understanding,” 
was severe and unsympathetic, but it is not difficult to see how a 
man of broad common sense like Jefferson might be annoyed at some 
of Webster’s preachments. American provincialism of thought in 
the eighteenth century shows more in just such strivings after an 
unworthy independence than in a frank acceptance of the past 
achievements of English civilization. 

The views which Jefferson held with respect to language, especially 
with respect to the use of neologisms, have been discussed in the 
chapter on vocabulary. They were, as one would expect from the 
man, sensible and liberal views. Jefferson had no notion of discarding 
in America the good which England had to offer. What he desired 
to secure in the matter of language was coéperation between Englaud 
and America. For the good of the English language in England as 
well as for the good of the English language in America, he counseled 
an open-mindedness towards innovation such as would permit new 
adaptations to new circumstances and would permit growth where 
growth was necessary. Only as a final evil did he permit his mind 
to dwell on the possibility that the English language of England 
might become stationary, in which case he adds, Writings, ed. Wash- 
ington, VI, 184, ‘“‘we shall probably enlarge our employment of it, 
until its new character may separate it in name as well as in power, 
from the mother-tongue.”’ 

No traces of the beginning of this separation can be found in 
Jefferson’s own writings. He is credited with having coined the 
verb belittle, but this is a stray and doubtful example. Neither in 
vocabulary nor in syntax does his writing betray any peculiar Amer- 
icanism. Such local flavor as it has comes from content, not form, 
and any Englishman of equal good sense and knowledge would have 
written as he wrote. Jefferson was greatly interested in French 
thought and French style, as were many other Americans in his day. 
It is doubtful if any other American has been quite as much at home 
in France as was Franklin, and it was a common charge against 
Jefferson by his enemies that he was too much under the influence 


STYLE 281 


of French philosophy. This interest also tended to preserve Ameri- 
can English from provincial extravagance, encouraging at the same 
time simplicity and lightness rather than pomposity of style. 

In their critical opinions as in their writings, Americans of the 
first years of the Republic accepted and approved the simple and 
natural standards of style which entered English literature in the 
first decade of the eighteenth century. In the meantime Dr. John- 
son had appeared and had done his best to free the language of 
“colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms and irregular combina- 
tions,’ to reduce it in short to a pompous and formal regularity. In 
America, however, little respect was shown for the Johnsonian style, 
and though the reaction against Johnson became marked also in 
England at the end of the eighteenth century, opinion in America 
seems to have been independent of opinion in England. In a revo- 
lutionary society supposedly based upon simple common rights one 
ought not indeed to find the artificial and narrowly literary style of 
Johnson regarded sympathetically. The temptation to do so lay 
in the fact that it provided an easy method and technic for acquiring 
literary distinction. To write in the Johnsonian style was much 
easier than to write in a simpler style. One must record it to the 
credit of American writers that in this difficult period of their literary 
development they did not lose sight of the essential element in their 
new freedom. 

Dislike of Dr. Johnson went deeper than it would have done if it 
had been occasioned merely by his political opinions. It is not to be 
expected that Americans would think kindly of the author of Taza- 
tion No Tyranny and of many a jibe by the way at America as the 
home of uncivilized barbarians, a region interesting only for its 
“natural curiosities.” ‘‘A nation scattered in the boundless regions 
of America,’’ wrote Johnson in his Journey to the Western Islands, 
“resembles rays diverging from a focus. All the rays remain but 
the heat is gone.’””, When Johnson wrote thus he could not have been 
thinking of American opinions of his style, for there was heat enough 
in them. Webster was untiring in his hostility to Johnson. He 
declared, Dissertations, p. xi, that Johnson’s pedantry had ‘“‘cor- 


282 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


) 


rupted the purity of the English language,” and again, p. 32, that 
‘“‘the benefits derived from his morality and his erudition will hardly 
counterbalance the mischief done by his manner of writing.’’ Web- 
ster was of the opinion, p. 30, that it would have been fortunate for 
the English language if the style of writing had been fixed as it stood 
in the reign of Queen Anne and her successor, that ‘“‘few improve- 
ments have been made since that time, but innumerable corruptions 
in pronunciation have been introduced by Garrick, and in stile, by 
Johnson, Gibbon and their imitators.’’ One may doubt the influence 
of Garrick in pronunciation, but there can be no question that the 
learned and artificial style acquired great respect through the example 
set by Dr. Johnson and his followers at the very time when the first 
Americans were choosing the style in which they would write. 

The views of Hugh Henry Brackenridge on Johnson and on style 
in general are worth more than a moment’s notice. Brackenridge 
began the publication of his Modern Chivalry in 1792, a book which 
from the point of view of literary virtuosity, had no equal in American 
literature until the appearance of Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History. 
Modern Chivalry is a medley of satirical, humorous and other sketches 
on distinctly American subjects, but largely inspired by the reading 
of Cervantes, Le Sage and Swift. In the Author’s Address to the 
Reader, Brackenridge raises the question of the best means of doing 
something towards establishing the literary character of the English 
language, and concludes that ‘‘if some work were undertaken with 
a view to stile, regarding thought as of secondary importance, it 
might do more to effect so desirable an end, than can be accomplished 
by all the dictionaries and institutes that were ever made.” He 
therefore undertook this book, ‘‘in which stile, language and forms 
of expression are more regarded than matter.”” With this program, 
the author permitted himself the greatest liberty of excursion, both in 
narrative and in casual comment. He frequently took the reader 
with him to his literary workshop, discussing purposes and methods of 
writing with the learning and earnestness of the true artist. ‘‘The 
English language,’ he declared, Vol. I, Chapter XX, ‘‘has not been 
so well written in England since the time of that literary dunce, 


STYLE 283 


Samuel Johnson, who was totally destitute of taste for the vraz 
naturelle, or simplicity of nature.” ‘‘Language being the vestment 
of thought,”’ he says elsewhere in this same chapter, ‘‘it comes within 
the rules of other dress; so that, as slovenliness, on the one hand, 
or foppery on the other, is to be avoided in our attire, so also in our 
speech and writing. Simplicity in the one and the other, is the 
greatest beauty.” In another passage, Vol. IV, Chapter II, which 
must be quoted, he acknowledges his chief admirations among Eng- 
lish writers. He repeats the statement that in the writing of his 
book, style was his primary object, adding, ‘“‘I will acknowledge at 
the same time, entre nous, that stile is what I never could exactly 
hit, to my own satisfaction. And in the English language, that of 
Hume, Swift, and Fielding, is the only stile that I have coveted to 
possess. For I take it they are precisely the same, according to the 
subjects of their writing. But the easy, the natural, and the graceful, 
is of all stiles, whether of manners or of speaking, the most difficult 
to attain.” 

Thus early in the annals of American writing, Brackenridge had 
comprehended the peculiarly American problem of combining in- 
formality and art. His own performances were frankly experimental, 
and in one respect at least his judgment was faulty. He was mis- 
taken in thinking that by style alone he could effectively establish 
a literary use of the English language. A permanently interesting 
content is necessary to keep a work alive, and if Brackenridge had 
devoted as much attention to content as he did to style, his book 
would not now be known only to the literary or linguistic historian. 
The book was popular in its own day, but it is more significant as 
showing the drift of literary thought in Brackenridge’s time than for 
any direct influence which it has exerted upon other writers. 

One further early criticism of Johnson may be noted from the 
pen of Joseph Brown Ladd, a poet of some merit who was born at 
Newport in 1764 and was killed in a duel at Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, in 1786. In his Literary Remains, pp. 181-194, appears an essay 
which must have been first printed very soon after Johnson’s death. 
“Of all modern perversions of taste,” he remarks, “‘the works of 


284 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Johnson have done the greatest mischief.’”’ The Rambler is said to 
be written ‘‘in a swelled, pompous, bombastical language, an affected 
structure, and verbosity of style.’ ‘The swelled, bombastic style 
succeeds with the lower class of readers, who are by far the most 
numerous. Hence, every writer, who is deficient in that genius, will 
affect pomposity and magnificence of language.” ‘At present,” 
concludes the essay, ‘‘this alarming revolution of our taste seems to 
be making hasty strides in common life. There are few readers who 
think a writer tolerable that is not magnificent. Overseers write 
florid letters to their employers; and men in business publish sublime 
advertisements.” 


The first region of America in which a genuine community interest 
and effort in literature developed was in Connecticut. In the last 
quarter of the eighteenth century that group of writers known as the 
Hartford Wits made what they thought was a new literary discovery 
of America, not to be sure the discovery of a literary continent 
already in existence, but of an utterly virgin empire of literary themes 
waiting to crown them and America with glory. 

There was good reason why Connecticut should be the home of 
the muses in the latter eighteenth century. By that time the State 
was completely settled and homogeneously civilized. The popula- 
tion had come in from two directions. From the older colony in 
Massachusetts, pioneer adventurers had entered the valley of the 
Connecticut within the seventeenth century. Other settlements 
were made along the Sound, and the two waves of population spread- 
ing south and north soon mingled and extinguished the frontier, so 
far as Connecticut was concerned. The Connecticut Yankee pros- 
pered and was happy. He did not grow rich, for his land did not 
flow with milk and honey. It was a stony and hilly land in the main, 
cut into numerous north and south ridges with narrow valleys be- 
tween them and rivers that leaped south into the Sound. But the 
rivers were full of waterfalls which supplied power for countless small 
factories, for hoe shops and hat shops, for ax factories, for clock 
factories, for the making of an infinite variety of Yankee notions. 


STYLE 285 


The valleys were fertile and the hills too brought forth abundantly 
when strenuous labor had obtained for the seed a lodging place among 
the rocks. Travelers and contemporary recorders unite in present- 
ing an idyllic picture of busy and humble contentment in the Con- 
necticut of the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Steam 
and electricity had not yet revealed their possibilities. The organi- 
zation of business and manufacturing was still on a small scale and 
humanly comprehensible. The glamour of western riches and adven- 
ture had not yet made the farmer and mechanic weary of his simple 
and hard-working lot. All the boundless energy which later was to 
play a chief part in subduing the wilderness of central New York, 
of the Western Reserve in Ohio, of southern Michigan, Wisconsin 
and northern Indiana and Illinois, all this was still active in the many 
pleasant villages that nestled in the valleys or perched upon the hill- 
tops throughout the length and breadth of Connecticut. 

In those days Connecticut was not only a happy land, but the 
people who dwelt in it knew that it was. They were proud of their 
State, proud of their skill, proud of their learning, proud of their 
democracy, proud of their country of which they considered them- 
selves to be no inconsiderable part. Noah Webster was only one of 
many who had visions of this people asserting itself, building upon 
its own fully developed and harmonious culture a new civilization 
which should be distinctive for America as British culture was dis- 
tinctive for England. Certainly such a people could not remain 
satisfied without some literary achievement to maintain proper bal- 
ance with the other elements of its greatness. To achieve was the 
prime necessity in Connecticut, and the Hartford Wits were not 
sluggish in realizing this new opportunity at their doors, and this 
pious obligation which rested upon them. 

Life at this time and in this place was by no means given over to 
material things. Every village had its respected representatives of 
learning and piety. Jonathan Edwards was born in a Connecticut 
village and educated at Yale. Intellectual interests indeed had ad- 
vanced so far by the last quarter of the century, that not a little of 
the rationalist and sceptical color of French philosophy was tolerated 


286 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


even in the opinions of highly respected persons. Plain living and 
high thinking were the order of the day and the soil was well prepared 
for the flowering of a literary culture. 

The most distinguished members of this Connecticut republic of 
letters were Timothy Dwight, one of Yale’s memorable presidents, 
Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, and David Humphreys. All these 
writers were mainly poets. Dwight published his Conquest of Canaan 
in 1785, though it was written eleven years before. It is a long epic 
poem based on Scriptural sources, but the transition from Canaan to 
Connecticut was easy for Dwight, and the poem was not lacking in 
local American allusion and color. Its chief literary models were 
Pope’s Homer and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Dwight’s Greenfield Hill 
was published in 1794. It was written in several rhythms, heroic 
couplets, Spenserian stanzas, blank verse, and octosyllabics, each 
suggested by the characteristic metrical form of a standard British 
poet. From the brow of Greenfield Hill where now he would look 
down upon smoky Bridgeport, the poet looked out upon the world. 
His feet and his heart were firmly fixed in America, but his vision 
was not merely of things parochial. When Dwight wrote about 
Connecticut, he did so with the full realization that he was, as it were, 
putting Connecticut on the literary map. He was doing for Green- 
field Hill what Goldsmith, Thomson, Denham, Milton, Pope and 
Beattie had done for various regions in England, and in fact he often 
did this in almost exactly the same words. 

The grandiose conception of Columbus seeing in vision the future 
of the continent he had discovered provided Joel Barlow with the 
theme for his Viscons of Columbus, published in 1787. This was later 
doubled in size and published as an epic poem, The Columbiad, in 
1807. As an epic worthy of America, The Columbiad was designed 
to out-Homer Homer. Not only was its subject greater, but its 
style was more refined and its moral purpose was loftier than any- 
thing Homer dreamed of. In other words, Barlow did not attempt 
to create a new style for his American epic but merely to do better 
what Pope and Milton and Virgil and Homer had done before him. 
In the Conquest of Canaan and The Columbiad America was now 


STYLE 287 


provided by these industrious sons of Connecticut with two great 
epic poems. 

The first part of Trumbull’s McFingal appeared in 1775, and the 
first complete edition in 1782. It is a satirical poem, animated and 
amusing, but as closely imitative of Butler’s Hudibras as an inde- 
pendent work well could be. It is abundantly patriotic in spirit and 
upon this doubtless depended its great contemporary popularity. 
In the various poems of Humphreys, gathered together as Miscel- 
laneous Works in 1790, there is voiced the same high confidence in 
the future glory of America. As for style, a remark which Humph- 
reys makes in the preface to his writings is conclusive. ‘Every 
poet,” he declares, ‘‘who aspires to celebrity strives to approach the 
perfection of Pope and the sweetness of his versification.’’ 

One turns from the contemplation of the works of these Hartford 
Wits with a mingled feeling of relief and melancholy. The poems 
they wrote are so good that one wonders why they are not really 
good. They exhibit tremendous energy, their themes are promising, 
they glow with love of man and nature and country, their technic is 
adequate, and yet scarcely a line from them is now remembered. 
One cannot lay this failure to the models followed, for they were of 
the best. Nor would it be just to ask that these poets should have 
foregone all literary models, should have built upon a new American 
foundation an entirely new American style. Such an effort would 
have been exactly opposite to their intention. What they strove to 
accomplish was the acclimatization in America of an admired, and 
rightly admired, culture of the old world. The claims of American- 
ization were best satisfied, in their minds, when American themes 
were clothed in the best style which the traditions of English literature 
afforded. Their reasoning, it must be acknowledged, was sound. 
For its growth and development, literature must have literary sus- 
tenance. The cause of their failure is not to be found in technic, 
but in the spirit in which they went to work at their self-imposed 
task. A poet must imitate, but must beware of being too imitative. 
For he must transmute as well as imitate. Intelligence, ingenuity 
and energy are not a complete equipment for the poet, not at least for 


288 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


the kind of poet who was putting new life into English poetry at 
the turn of the century. Had this first flowering of American letters 
in Connecticut occurred a generation earlier, the fame of the poets 
of this period might have borne some relation to that of Dryden and 
Pope. If it had come a generation later, a different imaginative 
spirit would have animated it and have made it perhaps significant 
and alive even for the present day. 

From Connecticut the center of literary effort passed to New 
York in the first decades of the nineteenth century. In 1807 Irving 
and Paulding satirized the follies of the city in Salmagundz, a series 
of essays frankly Addisonian. The title Salmagundi is not Indian, 
as it sounds, and there is no taint of the wigwam about the per- 
formance. In 1809, Irving published his satirical and humorous 
History of New York. Sir Walter Scott read this book with pleasure 
and meant to pay it a compliment when he commented on its simi- 
larity to Swift. The gentle Irving and the saturnine Swift do not 
seem much alike temperamentally, but certainly it is true that Irving 
studied Swift’s ironic method before he wrote his Knickerbocker 
History. 

Ten years after the publication of the Knickerbocker History, the 
essays of the Sketch Book began to appear. By this time Irving’s 
literary art had been completely formed. He wrote nothing better 
than the Sketch Book and nothing markedly different. No elaborate 
analysis is necessary to show the dependence of the Sketch Book upon 
Addison and Goldsmith. Irving himself would have been the last 
to deny this dependence. He wrote a life of Goldsmith which shows 
how harmoniously attuned were the souls of these two kindly essay- 
ists. Shortly after the appearance of the Sketch Book, the British 
critic Hazlitt wrote, Spirit of the Age, p. 405, that Irving's writings 
were ‘‘very good copies of our British essayists and novelists, which 
may be very well on the other side of the water, or as proof of the 
capabilities of the national genius, but might be dispensed with here, 
where we have to boast of the originals.”’ This criticism was both 
ill-natured and stupid. Irving’s essays were not copies of Addison’s 
or Goldsmith’s. They were in the same literary tradition, a tradition 


STYLE 289 


which they made more illustrious, but on the ground that one can 
get along with ‘‘the originals,” one would have to reject Goldsmith 
and Steele as well as Irving, for Addison set the fashion for British 
as well as American essayists. In reality English readers have never 
done so, but have taken Irving as one of their own, as Americans 
have taken Addison and Goldsmith. The Sketch Book was first 
published in England, and has there remained popular. 

Cooper’s first novel, Precaution, was published in 1820, one year 
after the first part of the Sketch Book had appeared. ‘‘ Reading some 
cheap British novel,’ says Brander Matthews, American Literature, 
p. 60, “‘he was seized with the idea that he could do as well himself; 
and the result was his first book, ‘Precaution,’ published late in 1820. 
‘Precaution’ was an imitation of the average British novel of the 
time; it had merit equal to that of most of its models; it was a tale 
of life in England, and there was nothing to show that its author was 
not an Englishman. Indeed when the book was republished in Lon- 
don, it was reviewed with no suspicion of its American authorship.” 
But Cooper was not proud of Precaution after it was done, and in 1821 
he published The Spy, the first of his long list of genuinely American 
novels. 

It is customary to speak with condescension of Cooper’s style, as 
of that of Scott, his predecessor and master. But if Cooper was 
careless, it was not because he was indifferent. Unquestionably 
Cooper was deeply interested in the whole matter of the technic of 
expression. The Pvzoneers, published in 1823, might almost be 
described as an experiment in varying styles of expression. Some 
half dozen different dialect types are elaborately studied and illus- 
trated in dialog, but in the end all these dialect speeches, even the 
native American speech of Natty, are put on the more or less humor- 
ous, popular level, while high above them shines the elegant and 
formal style of the polished gentleman as represented by Marmaduke 
Temple. This formal style is merely the standard or conventional 
literary language, as Cooper conceived it and as it was applied by 
him often with a stiffness and severity which belonged to the precise 
methods of the old school. Cooper was aware of and valued the 


290 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


rich stores of popular idiom in America. From the point of view of 
dignified literature, however, there was something else which he 
valued more highly. This was the ancient and pure style of the 
great masters of English literature, not in their lightest and most 
playful moments, but when they spoke seriously and with circum- 
spection. It was from the elevation of this style that Cooper viewed 
the scene and the characters of American life. Genuine Americanism 
in his conception was a varied thing, and careful cultivation of refined 
literary tradition no less genuine than the speech of backwoodsmen. 

It would be tedious and unnecessary to continue through the whole 
catalog of classic American authors with the purpose of showing that 
their artistic allegiance has been overwhelmingly given to the central 
tradition of classical English literature. Merely raising the question 
indicates the obvious answer. One cannot always find immediate 
models for writers as skilful and independent as were Longfellow, 
Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Lowell and the other New England 
masters of the early flowering period of American literature, any 
more than one can find immediate models for Macaulay or Thackeray 
or any of the greater names in British literature. Individual varia- 
tion made these several writers different from each other, but the 
differences of all, whether British or American, were made on the basis 
of a common literary aspiration and a common inherited literary 
tradition. No American writer wanders further from this central 
tradition than Carlyle, and certainly a conception of English litera- 
ture broad enough to include Carlyle and Lamb, Browning and 
Tennyson, would be broad enough to accommodate any American 
writer. Individual variation has always been characteristic of Eng- 
lish literature, sometimes within very wide limits. What holds all 
these varying units together into something single and homogeneous 
is a desire and a loyalty not easily definable except in terms of the 
traditional literary idiom of the English language. Carlyle and 
Emerson, Lamb and Lowell all felt themselves to be parts of English 
literature because they all wrote the same language, not identically 
the same language, but the same language in spirit and feeling. The 
area of variation between an American writer and his fellow writers, 


STYLE 291 


American or British, has never been permitted to become so great as 
not to be negligible to any one whose native speech is English and 
who approaches the writer with the sympathetic intention of getting 
his message. The Americanism of American literature has always 
been an Americanism of thought, of scene and of action, not an 
Americanism of style which would have made this American content 
intelligible only to those who were prepared to approach it on a 
limited American plane. All this may seem so obvious as not to call 
for statement. Its very obviousness, however, seems often to 
cause it to be overlooked. The feeling for the whole historical tradi- 
tion of the English language is so immanent in the literary use of 
the English language in America that one may be as unconscious of 
its presence as one is of breathing in the living body. It has been 
indeed the very breath of life to American literature. Localism and 
nationalism have been, one may say, merely casual symptoms which 
from time to time enable one to perceive more fully and consciously 
the main stream of life with which they are contrasted. To call this 
American attitude towards English style provincial would be to miss 
the character of it. A writer might be described as provincial if he 
deliberately set to work to copy the manner and themes of a respected 
master, as many an American poet, and British poet as well, copied 
Pope in the eighteenth century. The representative writers of 
American literature have not done this. They have united themselves 
to the central tradition of the language as naturally as Carlyle the 
Scotchman did, or Kipling the East Indian, or as any Canadian, 
Australian, or South African would who felt impelled to write English. 
‘The bond which unites them all is the feeling for the common literary 
idiom. To prefer this common idiom to some local literary dialect 
is not provincialism but common sense. The use of the common 
idiom has not been and cannot be conferred as a privilege granted by 
favor. The feeling of American writers has always been that a com- 
mon possession like literary English style calls for no special per- 
missions, the only necessary key of admission being an understanding 
of what this style is and a willingness to undergo the discipline by 
which alone one can become a master of the art of English writing. 


292 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


If one can conceive of American writers as intentionally departing 
from the central feeling for the English literary idiom, it would 
obviously be in vocabulary and grammar that the easiest roads to 
eccentricity would be opened. No tests of rhythm or cadence have 
as yet been elaborated in general consciousness definite enough to 
serve as distinctions between different types of expression, whether 
spoken or written, cultivated or uncultivated. The literary artist 
unquestionably uses cadences which do not occur in the speech of 
matter-of-fact persons, when they are discussing matter-of-fact affairs. 
But only in the rarest instances can one disentangle a cadence of 
speech and say that it carries with it an accompaniment of precise 
connotation in the experience of language which enables one to 
place the user of it in a fixed position relative to all other users of the 
language. It is quite otherwise, however, with respect to words and 
grammar. The limits of possible variation in what one calls cultivated 
language are vast, but they are also very definitely fixed. They are 
wide enough to include writers as different as Carlyle and Pater, 
but not wide enough to betray even the most extravagant author 
into using done or seen as a past tense, into doing any of the things 
peculiar to uncultivated use. All this is merely equivalent to saying 
that literary style rests in the main upon those limited uses of the 
language which constitute the accepted standards of cultivated 
speech. And just as American colloquial speech, in its standard use, 
has constantly endeavored to establish a form of cultivated speech 
distinctive for those who take an artist’s concern in speech, so also 
in its literary use, American writing when tested by the forms of popu- 
lar vocabulary and grammar is seen to be something with aspirations 
and sanctions of its own. 

In the preceding paragraphs an attempt has been made to describe 
the impulse which in general has governed Americans in the practical 
exercise of the technic of writing. They have not striven to be 
exclusively American, but above all to be English. They have allied 
themselves to the central tradition of English literature, and if they 
have committed sins against this central idiom, it has been by inad- 
vertence, not by intention. To explain just how the feeling for this 


STYLE 293 


central idiom has been established would call for a special study of 
each individual author, but always an important element in the 
explanation would be the reading and loyal study of the past masters 
of English literature. Rebellion against this tradition has never gone 
far, has never been an intentional rebellion, not even in Walt Whit- 
man’s most striking and radical departures. In the fifties, Whitman 
put together a number of observations on English which he published 
in 1855 as An American Primer. In this essay, readers familiar with 
Whitman’s verse will find the same keen and exultant joy in the 
richness of words as in his poetry. Though words were to Whitman 
not positive and original things themselves, they were the most 
direct way of knowledge to a troubled and tumbling wealth of things 
that pressed upon his consciousness. “In America” says Whitman, 
‘an immense number of new words are needed,” and a long catalog 
follows of the kinds of these needs. ‘‘Words are wanted to supply 
the copious trains of facts, and flanges of facts, feelings, arguments 
and adjectival facts, growing out of all new knowledge,’ American 
Primer, p. 9. ‘‘The occasions of the English speech in America,”’ 
he says elsewhere, p. 2, ‘‘are immense, profound—stretch over ten 
thousand vast cities, over millions of miles of meadows, farms, 
mountains, men, through thousands of years . . . Geography, ship- 
ping, steam, the mint, the electric telegraph, railroads, and so forth, 
have many strong and beautiful words. Mines—iron works—the 
sugar plantations of Louisiana—the cotton crop and the rice crop— 
Illinois wheat—Ohio corn and pork—Maine lumber—all these 
sprout in hundreds and hundreds of words, all tangible and clean- 
lived, all having texture and beauty.”’ But what these words them- 
selves are Whitman does not pause to say, not even to illustrate. 
His interest in them was not philological, not even literary, but 
rather in the sense of life which by their mere existence they gave him. 
Even in his verse he used very few words which were not ordinarily 
current in the language. A few novelties like camerado, imperturbe 
loom large because they are so infrequent, and they are Whitmanisms, 
not Americanisms. In short Whitman was entranced with the vision 
of a multitudinous life for literary purposes, but well realized that 


294 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


literary purposes could be made effective only when style and lan- 
guage were kept within literary bounds. These bounds he some- 
times passed, but some errors he was sure to make in his exuberant 
desire to test the limits of possible experiment. His eccentricities of 
style summed up are no greater, however, than those of Browning. 
He was ejaculatory and apocalyptic, dithyrambic and chaotic, but 
in detail he respected normal literary experience more than Browning. 
Browning often shocked his readers into attention by formal and 
mechanical eccentricity; Whitman does this by a pose of the spirit. 
Not only what he did, but also the things he avoided doing are signi- 
ficant for Whitman’s style. With his theories he might well have 
attempted to exalt the ungrammatical speech of illiterates for literary 
purposes. He might have regarded this as the real literary America. 
He might have used the common, vulgar words of low life, ‘‘the 
slang words among fighting men, gamblers, thieves, prostitutes. . . . 
These words ought to be collected—the bad words as well as the good. 
—Many of these bad words are fine.” But collecting them and ad- 
miring them as fine from the safe distance of the cultivated speech 
are different matters from using them as expressive of the inmost 
heart of one’s being. Whitman did not use them. He had no desire 
to degrade the great literary tradition of the English language, to 
bring it down to an unlettered popular level. The English language in 
America, he declares, p. 7, is ‘‘the body of the whole of the past. 
We are to justify our inheritance—we are to pass it on to those who 
are to come after us, a thousand years hence, as we have grown out 
of the English of a thousand years ago: American geography,—the 
plenteousness and variety of the great nations of the Union—the 
thousands of settlements—the seacoast—the Canadian north— 
the Mexican south—California and Oregon—the inland seas—the 
mountains—Arizona—the prairies—the immense rivers’”—all these 
have a duty to perform to the English language of the past, an addi- 
tion to make to the English language of the future. ‘‘Never will 
I allude to the English language or tongue without exultation. This 
is the tongue that spurns laws, as the greatest tongue must. It is the 
most capacious vital tongue of all—full of ease, definiteness and 


STYLE 295 


power—full of sustenance.—An enormous treasure house, or range of 
treasure houses, arsenals, granary, chock full with so many contri- 
butions from the north and from the south, from Scandinavia, from 
Greece and Rome,—from Spaniards, Italians and the French,—that 
its own sturdy home-dated Angles-bred words have long been out- 
numbered by the foreigners whom they lead—which is all good 
enough, and indeed must be.—America owes immeasurable respect 
and love to the past, and to many ancestries, for many inheritances— 
but of all that America has received from the past, from the mothers 
and fathers of laws, arts, letters, etc., by far the greatest inheritance 
is the English language—so long in growing—so fitted,” American 
Primer, p. 30. When the radical speaks thus, the conservative may 
keep silence. 


It is plain, however, that the whole story of American style has 
not been told when one has taken account of the classics of American 
literature. There is more to be said than that. If serious American 
literature is to be swallowed up in general English literature, as it 
seems to have been, one must seek elsewhere for something distinc- 
tive and peculiar in the American manner of expression. That this 
something exists, no one can doubt. There is an Americanism of 
expression strongly colored and highly flavored, racy of the soil and 
the people. It has manifested itself, however, on levels different 
from those on which Emerson and Longfellow and all the other 
traditionally great writers of America have moved, different from 
those upon which the serious literary artists in America today are 
moving. In the attempt to determine these levels, the parallelism 
between style and dialect will again be useful. In speech one takes 
account, first of all, of a generalized standard English speech, which 
is approximately the same among all cultivated persons, whether 
they are residents of London or Chicago or Melbourne or Vancouver. 
Individual variations will appear even in the standard speech of the 
persons from these various places, but not ordinarily by intention 
or preference. When one speaks the standard English speech one 
endeavors to speak a language which will make one seem at home 


296 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


wherever native English is spoken. Corresponding to this general 
standard for the spoken language, English literature has its own 
standard literary style. | 

But every speaker, even the most cosmopolitan and completely 
“standardized”’ is not only a citizen of the general English world, 
he is also a native of some local community. If he is a cultivated 
person, he may speak the standard language when he wishes. But 
he will not probably always wish to do so. There are times when 
he will prefer to speak with some more intimate and local flavor. 
Even if his informal speech is merely the English of colloquial dis- 
course, it will differ in many respects from the more formal, or 
standard, use of the language. The informal or local speech will 
often seem more penetrating, more genuine than the standard speech. 
It will carry with it the direct and close associations of everyday 
life, and will have the warmth of immediate experience. One can 
call it better than the standard speech, however, only by assuming 
that all life should be conducted on the informal and intimate basis, 
and one could call it worse only by assuming that formal speech is 
the only justifiable norm and guide to proper expression. The truth 
is that one is not to be measured by the other. They are two dif- 
ferent things, each proper in its own place and when it performs its 
appropriate tasks. So in style, by the side of the formal literary 
style there flourishes a more or less popular and informal style. The 
latter is not a cultivated style, that is, not formed by the studious 
examination of approved literary models. It arises more directly 
from experience, is likely to manifest itself in ephemeral writings, 
which seem exceptionally expressive and vigorous for the short time 
that they last. Whether or not this kind of writing should be called 
literature is a matter of definition. Obviously no sharp dividing 
line can be drawn between familiar literary composition and formal 
literary composition. The former may pass into the latter by im- 
perceptible degrees, and the relative placing of any individual lit- 
erary manifestation will depend very much upon the ‘purity’ and 
severity of one’s literary standards. Thus one finds the greatest 
difference of opinion on the question just how Tom Sawyer is to be 


STYLE 297 


ranked as a literary monument, whether low, as a popular, bad-boy 
book, or high among the immortal classics of American literature. 
But though one may not always know how to rate popular literary 
compositions, the quality of them is clearly recognizable. Here 
again the task of the historian is easier than that of the critic. As 
one looks back over the annals of American literature, one perceives 
that generations of readers on the whole have made the division clear 
between popular and classic endeavor in literature. The critic may 
rebel against these decisions, but for the historian they are the facts 
given. It is the purpose of the remainder of this chapter to discover 
the quality of these manifestations of the popular or informal style 
in American literature. 


The region in which a folk tradition of style first developed in 
America may roughly be given as Kentucky, or in general the new 
Southwest. The time was the end of the eighteenth century and 
the early years of the nineteenth century, especially in the period 
of exalted feeling before and after the war of 1812. The Revolution 
was over but not forgotten. Towards the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the restless Western movement began, opening up possibilities 
of a new world full of hope, adventure and romance. A generation 
of men was still living who had become accustomed to a life of hardy 
endeavor, who by personal effort had justified their right to inde- 
pendence and who were determined to follow the free promptings of 
their natures, wherever they might lead them. ‘‘The Kentucky 
spirit,” says Shaler, Kentucky, p. 21, ‘‘ was the offspring of the Revo- 
lution. The combative spirit left by the Revolutionary war was 
elsewhere overwhelmed by the tide of commercial life; here it lived 
on, fed by the tradition and by a nearly continuous combat down to 
the time of the Rebellion.””’ Adventuring into Kentucky had indeed 
begun before the Revolution. Daniel Boone came to Kentucky from 
North Carolina in 1769. Others also came in the third quarter of the 
century, but ‘“‘the singular feature about all these early wanderings 
in Kentucky is,” to quote Shaler again, p. 65, ‘that although they 
had been going on for thirty years or more, many of the explorers 


298 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


returning two or three times to the ground, they were moved 
more by the spirit of adventure than by any distinct love of gain or 
idea of permanent settlement. To make a perilous journey into the 
dark and bloody battle-ground of the Indians, and then to return 
with many stories of hair-breadth escapes and a scalp or two, seems 
to have been the motive and end of these numerous expeditions.” 
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, however, pioneer con- 
ditions in Kentucky began to be modified somewhat and a kind of 
community character to develop. But the circumstances in which 
the members of the community had grown up, had brought into 
being, says Shaler, p. 111, ‘“‘a peculiar sort of man,—a kind that was 
never known before or since in such numbers in any one country. 
. . . They had a very peculiar quality of mind. Its most character- 
istic feature was a certain dauntlessness, a habit of asserting the in- 
dependence of all control except that of the written law. Their 
speech was rude and often exaggerated. As a class, they were much 
like the men of to-day [1885] in the Rocky Mountains, except that 
they had not the eager desire for gain that takes away from the 
charm of that people. This advantage made the frontiersman of 
Kentucky a much more agreeable fellow than his money-seeking 
kinsman of the far West. He was more sympathetic, more external- 
ized, than the miner of Colorado to-day.” 

This exuberant Kentucky or Southwestern spirit did not escape 
the notice of early travelers in America and critics of American life. 
Timothy Flint, in his Recollections, p. 61, describes Kentucky in 1815 
as follows: 

‘“As soon as you depart from the Ohio [into Kentucky], and find 
yourself in the region of hills and springs, you will nowhere see fairer 
and fresher complexions, or fuller and finer forms, than you see in the 
young men and women, who are generally exempted from the neces- 
sity of labour. . . . The circumstances under which they are born 
tend to give them the most perfect development of person and form. 
It struck me, that the young native Kentuckians were, in general, 
the largest race that I had seen.” And he adds later, p. 71, that 
‘There is a distinct and striking moral physiognomy to this people; 


STYLE 299 


an enthusiasm, a vivacity, and ardour of character, courage, frank- 
ness, generosity, that have been developed with the peculiar circum- 
stances under which they have been placed.’”’ Kentucky sets the 
tone for all Western and Southwestern life, says Flint, and to be a 
Kentuckian is a sure way to success in elections for political office all 
through the West. 

Mellish, Travels, II, 94, gives an account of the warmth of char- 
acter of the Kentuckians, the result of observations made in the first 
decade of the nineteenth century. Fearon visited America and 
Kentucky in 1817, and he remarks, Sketches, p. 234, ‘‘I had received 
an impression that the genuine Kentuckian had many excellent traits 
of character.’”’ He then supports Mellish to the effect that the 
Kentuckians ‘‘resemble the Irish; are frank, affable, polite, and hos- 
pitable in a high degree; they are quick in their temper, sudden in 
their resentment, and warm in all their affections.’”? With his cus- 
tomary caution, Fearon says he does not feel competent to confirm 
or deny the general claim of the Kentuckians to generosity and 
warmth of character, but ‘“‘that they drink a great deal, and gamble 
a great deal, will be apparent to a very brief resident.””, An unknown 
American observer from Virginia gave a highly complimentary pic- 
ture of the Kentuckians in 1825, in Letters on the Condition of Ken- 
tucky, ed. Swem, p. 50. ‘‘The Kentuckians are in general,” he de- 
clared, ‘‘bold and enterprising; confiding in their friendships; acute 
and judicious in their traffic, ardent and aspiring in their feelings, 
energetic in their measures, and intelligent, manly and independent 
in their manners; the gentlemen are courteous, well-informed and 
cordially hospitable.’’ In 1828 when Cooper published his Notions 
he remarked, I, 224, that so far as the eye could judge, ‘‘men of great 
stature and strength are about as common in America as elsewhere, 
while small men are more rare,” but he added in a footnote that he 
had found ‘‘what he is almost tempted to call a race of big men in 
the southwestern states.”’ He noted also a new set of social man- 
ners in this region, Notzons, I, 102, remarking that a New Englander 
always addresses one as friend or squire, but that “in the new States 
to the Southwest”’ stranger is used. The expansiveness of the Ken- 


300 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


tuckian was not always agreeable to travelers. Beltrami, Pzlgrimage 
in Europe and America, 1828, Vol. II, p. 57, speaks of the Kentuckians 
‘‘whom it is really impossible to endure. It is a pity a people so 
brave, industrious and active should be so coarse and insolent; one 
can and must esteem them, but it is a difficult matter to like them.” 
Kentucky, he declares, p. 92, is ‘‘the Eden of the United States,’’ the 
people are ‘‘industrious, enterprising and brave,”’ but “‘insupportable 
from their insolence and coarseness. They are sometimes amusing, 
but always exceed all bounds of decent manners.”’ Beltrami’s code 
being that of the courts of Europe, one might imagine that a Salt 
river roarer would by this standard offend against propriety. 

As early as the first decade of the nineteenth century the Ken- 
tuckian had taken his place in American folklore. He was a new 
type of creature, with a shaggy style all his own, superabounding in 
energy. In the Knickerbocker History, Book VI, Chap. III, Irving 
says that ‘‘the backwoodmen of Kentucky are styled half man, 
half horse and half alligator, by the settlers on the Mississippi, and 
held accordingly in great respect and abhorrence.’’ The same 
description of the Kentuckians appears in Paulding’s The Buck- 
tails, written about 1812, and Thornton, I, 410 ff., gives a number of 
other citations. In the Salem Gazette for June 12, 1812, a com- 
munication from New Orleans says that ‘‘half horse half alligator 
has hitherto been the boast of our up-country boatmen, when quar- 
reling. The present season however has made a complete change. 
A few days ago two of them quarreled in a boat at Natchez, when 
one of them jumping ashore declared with a horrid oath that he was a 
steamboat. His opponent immediately followed him, swearing he 
was an earthquake and would shake him to pieces.”’ Another Mis- 
sissippl navigator, Analectic Magazine, IV, 638, 1814, ‘“‘affrmed him- 
self to be all alligator but his head, which was of aqua-fortis.” In 
Flint’s Recollections, p. 78, 1826, we are told that when the warmth 
of whiskey in a Kentuckian’s stomach is added to his natural energy, 
“he becomes in succession, horse, alligator and steamboat’; and p. 
98, there are others who ‘‘claim to be the genuine and original breed, 
compounded of the horse, alligator and snapping turtle.’ In the 


STYLE 301 


Richmond Whig for Dec. 9, 1828, occurred a description of a ‘Salt 
river roarer,”’ sometimes called a ring-tailed roarer, “‘one of those 
two-fisted backwoodsmen, half horse, half alligator and a little touched 
with the snapping turtle.” He went to see a caravan of wild beasts, 
and after giving them a careful examination, he offered to bet the 
owner that “he could whip his lion in an open ring; and he might 
throw in all his monkeys, and let the zebra kick him occasionally 
during the fight.”’ 

The half horse, half alligator character, the full grown snapping 
turtle, the yaller flower of the desert, was by this time well launched 
upon his literary career. Confiding travelers began to note that 
they met him in the flesh less generally in their travels than they had 
expected to do. Paul Hover in Cooper’s Prairie (1827) is one of 
these tall sons of Kentucky, a daredevil, amiable adventurer, brave 
but reckless, a bee-hunter by occupation, a lover and a poet, with 
‘fa careless, off-hand, heedless manner.”’ He has the gift of elo- 
quence like the rest of his kind. ‘‘I deny myself nothing,” he de- 
clares, Chap. III. ‘‘If a bear crosses my path he is soon a mere 
ghost of Bruin. The deer begin to nose me, and as for the buffalo, 
I have killed more beef, old stranger, than the largest butcher in all 
Kentuck.”’ 

“You can shoot then,’’ demanded the trapper, with a glow of 
latent fire glimmering about his eyes; ‘‘is your hand true and your 
look quick?”’ 

“The first is like a steel trap,’ answered Paul, ‘“‘and the last 
nimbler than buckshot. I wish it was hot noon now, grand’ther; 
and that there was an acre or two of your white swans or of black 
feathered ducks going south, over our heads; you or Ellen here might 
set your heart on the finest in the flock, and my character against a 
horn of powder, that the bird would be hanging head downwards in 
five minutes and that too with a single ball.” This is Kentucky 
eloquence enfeebled in Cooper’s somewhat inadequate literary imi- 
tation. It was more torrential when it stood nearer to its immediate 
popular sources. The romantic and grandiloquent Paul is interest- 
ingly contrasted, however, with another southwestern group in the 


302 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Prairie, with the family of Ishmael Bush, who is heavy and inarticu- 
late, typical of the low-down, sullen, lazy, shiftless, semi-outlaws of 
the border. 

In J. K. Paulding’s Westward Ho!, published in 1832, are to be 
found full length portraits of the free, daring and eloquent sons of 
Kentucky. The Life of David Crockett, supposed to have been writ- 
ten by himself, was ended, incomplete, in 1836, in which year Crockett 
was killed in a battle against the Mexicans on the Alamo in Texas. 
Crockett confessed to a certain amount of editorial assistance in the 
preparation of the manuscript of his Life, especially in grammar and 
spelling. How far this editorial assistance went it is impossible to 
say, impossible therefore to say who is responsible for the genuinely 
literary and imaginative quality that has made the autobiography 
a permanently interesting American book.: In it one finds the ex- 
pansive sentiment, the grandiloquence, the touches of emotional poe- . 
try, the wild adventure, the uncouth humor that later was to take 
completer and more successful literary form in the writings of Mark 
Twain, Bret Harte and other Pike county celebrities. ‘‘ Vice does 
not appear so shocking,” says Crockett, p. 344, ‘‘when we are famil- 
iar with the perpetrator of it.” This is a sentiment which could not 
come out of New England. It underlies the broad charity which 
made the outcasts of Poker Flat heroically human, which later in 
the stories of O. Henry, a disciple of Mark Twain and Bret Harte, 
in many a tale of the lonesome camp and the city slum was to show 
how the cool and well-regulated virtues of respectable persons may 
be made to seem contemptible when brought into contrast with the 
generous hearts and errors of desperadoes and derelicts. The unre- 
penting but potentially large-minded and warm-hearted sinner was 
necessary in the melodramatic morality appropriate to the grandilo- 
quent style. 

The various notes of the exuberant style are but tentatively 
sounded, not sustained, in Crockett’s Infe. The transitions are quick 
and the contrasts violent. At one moment the author is politician 
and statesman, at the next he is killing bears for his winter’s supply 


1See Tandy, Chapter IV, for a discussion of this question of authorship. 


STYLE 303 


of food. The picturesqueness and artistic possibilities of these con- 
trasts did not escape him, and it would not be safe to take the Life 
as a veracious record of the facts of the times. In the character of 
the bee-hunter, Edward, one can see obvious traces of the influence 
of Paul Hover in Cooper’s Prairie, which had appeared in 1827. 
Both are graceful, imaginative and poetic Southwest characters. 
The following picture of the dithyrambic backwoods orator also had 
its literary predecessors. ‘‘I jocosely asked the ragged hunter, who 
was a smart, active young fellow, of the steamboat and alligator 
breed,” writes Crockett, p. 381, ‘‘whether he was a rhinoceros or a 
hyena, as he was so eager for a fight with the invaders. ‘Neither the 
one nor the t’other, Colonel,’ says he, ‘but a whole menagerie in 
myself. I’m shaggy as a bear, wolfish about the head, active as a 
cougar, and can grin like a hyena, until the bark will curl off a gum 
log. There’s a sprinking of all sorts in me, from the hon down 
to the skunk; and before the war is over, you'll pronounce me an 
entire zoological institute, or I miss a figure in my calculation. I 
promise to swallow Santa Anna without gagging, if you will only 
skewer back his ears, and grease his head a little.’”’ 

Another sample of this exaggerated and picturesque backwoods 
eloquence is found in one of the characters of Bird’s Nick of the Woods 
(1837). This is a tale of frontier Kentucky life, supposedly in 1782, 
of a strong romantic flavor. The most interesting character study 
in the book is that of Ralph Stackpole, Roaring Ralph, a fire-eater 
and fighter, a horse-thief and a loud-mouthed braggart, a noisy, 
amusing, helpful, troublesome child of the frontier. He performs 
amazing physical contortions, jumps into the air, cracks his heels 
together, and sends forth a stream of prodigious eloquence. He 
speaks the true Southwest dialect, with an abundance of great words, 
like squabblification; aungelliferous madam; splendiferous; you ex- 
flunctified, perditioned rascal, etc. In his later years, Chapter 
XXXVI, Ralph gave up horse-stealing, ‘launched his broad-horn 
on the narrow bosom of the Salt, and was soon afterwards trans- 
formed into a Mississippi alligator; in which amphibious condition, 
we presume he roared on till the day of his death.” 


304 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Several plays, popularly successful, were built around the char- 
acter of the Kentucky hero. The earliest of these was J. K. Pauld- 
ing’s Lion of the West (1831). The Lion was Nimrod Wildfire, a 
‘‘humorous, unpolished, generous”? son of Old Kentuck who was 
always ‘‘primed for anything, from a possum-hunt to a nigger 
funeral,’ New York Mirror, Vol IX, p. 102 (1831). He must have 
a fight every ten days, or he feels ‘‘mighty wolfy about the head 
and shoulders.’ His sweetheart has ‘‘no back-out in her breed, 
for she can lick her weight in wild-cats, and she shot a bear at nine 
years old.” 

The name and the hero of this play were suggested to Paulding 
by the comedian James H. Hackett, who had offered a prize of three 
hundred dollars for ‘‘an original comedy whereof an American should 
be the leading character.”’ The judges, Bryant, Halleck and P. M. 
Wetmore, gave Paulding’s Lion of the West first place. The original 
play apparently was never published, but it was acted often and 
served as the basis for several adaptations, see W. I. Paulding’s 
Interary Infe of James K. Paulding, p. 219. One of the earliest of 
these revisions is reviewed in the New York Mirror, Vol. IX, p. 102 
(1831), and an outline of the plot is given. This review seems to 
be now the fullest extant source of information concerning the play. 
At the time of appearance of the play, Paulding found it necessary to 
write to David Crockett to say that the play had not been written 
as a take-off of the Representative from Tennessee. Crockett replied 
unorthographically but with dignity. The character of Nimrod 
Wildfire was one of Hackett’s most successful parts. ‘‘I have re- 
peatedly acted the character in that drama,” he said, ‘‘in every prin- 
cipal city of the United States with applause, and in every theatrical 
engagement I made for twenty years following.’ Similar characters 
appeared in Tecumseh (1836) by R. Emmons. Three expert rifle- 
men, Ralph, Arthur, and Franklin, figure in this play, see Reed, 
Realistic Characters, p. 103. Like all Kentuckians, they drink much 
whiskey, but become intoxicated only on patriotic occasions, such 
as the Fourth of July and Washington’s Birthday. Ralph declares 
that he is ‘part horse, part alligator, a touch of the steamboat, and a 


STYLE 305 


sprinkling of an earthquake,” and he never does anything by halves 
but always ‘‘goes the whole hog.” 

A volume could be filled with examples of this expansive eloquence 
taken from the more or less popular literature of newspapers and 
magazines of the mid-decades of the nineteenth century. Old Dan 
Tucker, who combed his hair with a wagon wheel, is of this heroic 
origin. Drake’s poem to the American Flag, which first appeared 
in the Croaker Papers in 1819, begins with this bit of cosmic imagery: 


“When Freedom from her mountain height 
Unfurled her standard to the air, 
She tore the azure robes of night 
And set the stars of glory there!’’ 


Still more magnificent in his self-glorification was one described 
in a parody in the Knickerbocker Magazine, Vol. 51, p. 215 (1858), 
supposed to combine ‘“‘the sublime and mystic”: 


‘‘Ye cannot count me as I run, 
I play with stars at pitch and toss; 
I am the uncle of the sun, 
Half alligator and half hoss.”’ 


From this imaginative flight to Emerson’s ‘‘Hitch your wagon to a 
star’ the distance is not great. Both passages are in the spirit of 
the popular American imagination of the years preceding the Civil 
War. A robustious eloquence, a torrential flow of words, grand in 
sentiment, striking in figure, not without humorous coloring, this 
was the note to catch the popular ear of the time. The style took 
its origin in a genuinely native and independent desire for self- 
expression. Perhaps grandiloquence is not ordinarily characteristic 
of the popular mind. On the contrary, a certain decent modesty is 
commonly demanded by the people one of another. One must 
restrain oneself, not get ‘‘too gay” or ‘‘too fresh.’”? Extremes of 
manner are not encouraged, are condemned except in the favored 
few. The person, however, who is favored with the gift permits 
himself and is permitted any extravagance. He has the poet’s 
licence to be a harebrained scamp, to be a wag, a cut-up, a spouting 


306 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


fountain of fiery eloquence. When the creative fancy breaks loose 
in the popular orator, it sets no limits to its eruptions. 

In American society, especially between the War of 1812 and the 
Civil War, an exceptionally favorable occasion was offered for this 
kind of popular self-expression. It was a period of active and rapidly 
changing experience. The world was full of great opportunities. 
One man was as good as another and need not stop to say to him- 
self, when he felt the stirrings of the god within, that this sort of 
thing was meant for his betters, not for him. Nothing was too 
good for an American citizen, no attitude too magnanimous, no 
charity too broad, no comedy too fantastic, no poetry too fine, no 
thought too profound. This impulse toward the bold and the mag- 
nificent in self-expression has been characterized as the Kentucky 
spirit. It was more than that, it was a national spirit. It showed 
itself most strikingly along the path of adventure, down the Ohio 
and up the Missouri and across the Rockies to the gold fields of 
California, but it is implicit in various forms of American expression, 
some of which must be further noticed. Nor did these developments 
in popular eloquence take place without direction and approval. 
Timothy Flint wrote an essay on the style and eloquence of the 
pulpit, the bar and the press, ‘‘in the Three Great Divisions of the 
United States,” Western Monthly Review, III, 689-647 (1830),! in 
which he characterized the New England style as restrained and 
critical, the Southern style as self-confident and expansive, and the 
Western style as mixed, a compound of New England restraint and 
Western exuberance. But the restraint is very little evident in 
what Flint calls the Western style. ‘‘The eloquence of the East,” 
he says, *‘is sober, passionless, condensed, metaphysical; that of the 
West is free, lofty, agitating, grand, impassioned . . . the West 
defies and transcends criticism.” ‘‘What orator,’ asked a bold 
Kentuckian, ‘‘can deign to restrain his imagination within a vulgar 
and sterile state of facts?” ” 

Another defense and analysis of Western eloquence is contained 
in the following passage: 

1See Rush, Literature of the Middle Western Frontter, p. 205. 2 Rush, p. 206. 


STYLE 307 


“The literature of a young and free people will, of course, be 
declamatory, and such, so far as it is yet developed, is the character 
of our own. Deeper learning will, no doubt, abate its verbosity 
and intumescence; but our natural scenery, and our liberal political 
and social institution, must long continue to maintain its character 
of floridness. And what is there in this that should excite regret in 
ourselves, or raise derision in others? Ought not the literature of a 
free people to be declamatory? . . . Whenever the literature of a 
new country loses its metaphorical and declamatory character, the 
institutions which depend on public sentiment will languish and 
decline. . . . For a long time the oration, in various forms, will 
constitute a large portion of our literature. A people who have 
fresh and lively feelings will always relish oratory.” * 


The feat of making the eagle scream and of twisting the lion’s 
tail at Fourth of July and other patriotic celebrations was one of the 
accomplishments of the old-fashioned orator. The following toast 
was given at Waterville, Maine, on July 4, 1815: ‘“‘The Eagle of the 
United States—may she extend her wings from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific; and fixing her talons on the Isthmus of Darien, stretch with 
her beak to the Northern Pole,’’ Proceedings of the American Anti- 
quarian Society, New Series, 19, 31. Patriotic toasts of this kind 
were a regular feature in the Fourth of July celebrations of the early 
nineteenth century, first thirteen toasts, one for each of the original 
colonies, then an indefinite number of voluntary toasts. It is not 
easy to determine just how large an element of humor entered into 
these displays of flamboyant eloquence. They were not downright 
parodies, nor on the other hand is it conceivable that they were com- 
posed or heard in deadly earnest. Perhaps they can be best charac- 
terized as part of the noisy sport of the old-fashioned Fourth of July. 
The occasion was one of jubilant freedom, not to say license, in eating 
and above all in drinking, but in explosive oratory as well. Charles 
Sprague, in An Oration Delivered on Monday, Fourth of July, 1825, 


1 Daniel Drake, Discourse on the History, Character, and Prospects of the West 
(1834), pp. 32-33, 45. 


308 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


before the officials and citizens of Boston, began with this trumpet 
blast: 

“Why, on this day, lingers along these sacred walls, the spirit- 
kindling anthem? Why, on this day, waits the herald of God at the 
altar, to utter forth his holy prayer? Why, on this day, congregate 
here the wise, and the good, and the beautiful of the land?—Fathers! 
Friends! it is the Sabbath Day of Freedom! The race of the ran- 
somed, with grateful hearts and exulting voices, have again come up. 
in the sunlight of peace, to the Jubilee of their Independence!” 

The pastor of the First Universalist Church in New York, Abner 
Kneeland, touched a still higher note in the opening paragraph of 
his Oration, July 4, 1826, before the societies of New York assembled 
to celebrate the day: 

‘“Freemen! Friends! and Fellow-citizens! 

One hundred times has the sun crossed the equator, and the earth 
has made fifty complete revolutions in its orbit, since the Genius of 
Liberty, beholding with indignation the cruel arm of the oppressor, 
and hearing with sympathy the cries of the oppressed, arose in the 
majesty of her strength and, waving her broad pinions from Maine 
to Georgia, she took the trump of fame, and with a blast that thrilled 
like electricity through every American heart, pronounced these 
memorable words—‘Sons and Daughters of Columbia, scorn to be 
slaves!’”’ 

Infinite variations in the major key were played upon these 
patriotic themes. Mr. Cathcart of Indiana, remarked in the House 
of Representatives, Feb. 6, 1846, that ‘‘those convenient sources of 
poetic fancy, the American eagle and the British lion, have been so 
often drawn upon, that the roar of the one and the scream of the 
other now fall powerless,’ and then proceeds with a spreadeagle 
flight of his own: ‘‘From the apex of the Alleghany to the summit of 
Mount Hood, the bird of America has so often been made to take 
flight, that his shadow may be said to have worn a trail across the 
basin of the Mississippi; and the poor lord of the beasts has become so 
familiar with the point of a hickory pole and of an ash splinter, 
that he has slunk away to his lair, and there let him lie for the bal- 


STYLE 309 


ance of my allotted hour,’ Thornton, II, 985. Another example of 
this patriotic bombast may be cited from the speech of Samuel C. 
Pomeroy of Kansas, in the Senate, May 5, 1862: 

“The proudest bird upon the mountain is upon the American 
ensign, and not one feather shall fall from her plumage here. She is 
American in design, and an emblem of wildness and freedom. I 
say again, she has not perched herself upon American standards to 
die here. Our great Western valleys were never scooped out for her 
burial place. Nor were the everlasting untrodden mountains piled 
for her monument. Niagara shall not pour her endless waters for 
her requiem; nor shall our ten thousand rivers weep to the ocean 
in eternal tears. No, sir, no. Unnumbered voices shall come up 
from river, plain and mountain, echoing the songs of our triumphant 
deliverance, wild lights from a thousand hilltops will betoken the 
rising of the sun of freedom,” Thornton, II, 987. 

The date of the following, quoted in that rich mine of illustrations 
of American life, the Knickerbocker Magazine, 46, 212 (1855) is a few 
years earlier: 

“Sir, we want elbow-room!—the continent, the whole continent, 
and nothing but the continent! And we will have it! Then shall 
Uncle Sam, placing his hat upon the Canadas, rest his right arm on 
the Oregon and California coast, his left on the eastern seaboard, 
and whittle away the British power, while reposing his leg, like a 
freeman, upon Cape Horn! Sir, the day will—the ate must 
come!”’ 

Another sample from the Knickerbocker Magazine, 51, 209 (1858), 
was taken from the Jackson, Tennessee, ‘‘Madisonian.’”’ The con- 
cluding sentence will suffice: 

“The wild and mysterious hyperbolical phantasm of enthusiasts 
would create a furor and stampede, run riot over the safeguard of 
American liberty—the constitution—stab to the very vitals the great 
incentives which clustered around the spot that gave birth to the 
mighty instrument, mock their primitive fathers and mothers, sing 
the requiem to the death knell of Liberty, and gormandize over the 
destruction of the confederacy.” 


310 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


This grandiloquent style colored most of the serious political 
oratory of the ante-bellum generation. That it has completely died 
out of American oratory, one would fain believe, but must be con- 
tent with knowing that tall talk has become much less common and 
less extravagant than it was formerly.’ The artificial character of 
American oratory has frequently been noted. Brackenridge, in 
Modern Chivalry, Vol. IV, Chapter IX (1815), declared that the bar 
was the only real school of eloquence in America because the lawyer 
was always confronted with the concrete problem of winning his 
cases in order to make a living. On the other hand, the public 
speaker in an American deliberative assembly must always strive 
to please a many-headed and incomprehensible multitude at home. 
He cannot speak only to the point of a subject under discussion, but 
in order to avoid possible offense, must speak in general terms in 
which glittering ornament is substituted for solid content. A some- 
what similar comment was later made by Charles Francis Adams 


1 But occasional examples are still met with, as in the following prayer, reported as 
having been delivered at the inauguration of the governor of Arizona in the New York 
Times, January 30, 1923: 


““O, Thou Eternal Jehovah, on this inaugural day, as this grand old Roman assumes 
the gubernatorial responsibilities of this great Commonwealth, we stand as hopeful, 
happy expectants of better days for Arizona. We pray that he may have wisdom to 
steer the ship of State over the breakers of extravagance and the deep seas of indebted- 
ness which now confront him. 

‘“During his tenure of office spare him the unjust, unreasonable criticism of dis- 
gruntled mugwump Democrats, shrewd and designing Republican politicians and 
sensational headlines of newspapers. Grant that he may have the support and co- 
operation of all sections, from every hilltop high and valley low, from desert waste and 
city full, from these rich and fertile valleys where the lowing herds come winding o’er 
the lea and the plowman homeward plods his weary way, from the golden West, where 
the sun gilds the Western hills and the beautiful Colorado winds its way like a silver 
thread on its way to the ocean; from the north, where the snow-capped mountains 
and waving pines kiss the skies and aurora borealis shines at midnight like the noonday 
sun; from the East, where the quivering, glimmering rays of the coming sun prophesy 
the approach of the coming day and the stars pour their lustre on the mountain slopes; 
from the sunny South, where the notes of the nightingale are more melodious than the 
lays and lutes of Olympus and the song of the mocking bird sweeter than the sound of 
the dulcimer that is heard in the shadow of death. 

“Grant, O Lord, that the banner of peace and prosperity may wave over Arizona 
until every State in the Union shall point with pride to this, the youngest, fairest 
daughter and brightest star that shines in the galaxy of States and that Arizona may 
be regarded as the playground of the angels.”’ 


STYLE 311 


in 1861, A Cycle of Adams Letters, ed. Ford, I, 8. The characteristic 
of the English House of Commons, he remarked, is that ‘it is in 
essence a real deliberative body, whilst our House has ceased to be 
one. We speak to the people and not to the audience. Hence we 
make orations and not speeches. I know not how this can be rem- 
edied in America. Some members of Parliament tell me that it is 
perceptibly growing even here. So it must be, in proportion to the 
control which the people exercise over their representatives.” 
Whatever the amount of truth in this criticism of democratic 
oratory, it evidently fits better the conditions of political life in the 
old days of Andrew Jackson, of Tippecanoe and Tyler too, than it 
does political life to-day. A great change has come over the spirit 
of public discussion in America and much of the older grandiloquence 
and rustic picturesqueness has passed away. The flourishing period 
of American oratory was that which produced the three who by 
the test of popular fame are counted the greatest American orators. 
These were Daniel Webster, who died in 1852, John C. Calhoun, 
who died in 1850, and Henry Clay, who died in the same year as 
Webster. These three were orators in the old-fashioned grand style. 
In their public utterances they addressed no mere human beings, 
but made their appeals directly to the throne of truth and the bar 
of justice. The senatorial dignity which they assumed was partly 
necessitated by the more formal code of conduct of the older genera- 
tion, but still more was it cultivated as a refuge in which public 
speakers of pretensions to good taste, still remaining grand, could 
escape the crude bombast of the still more popular style of oratory. 
Perhaps they did not altogether escape the latter evil. Even the best 
of the orations of the old school were turgid, too much given to 
rhetorical attitudinizing, too ostentatious and mechanical in feeling. 
Webster was a man of massive personality, of great political wisdom, 
endowed by nature with a powerful mind which rigorous discipline 
enabled him to use effectively. For a long generation he produced 
upon his contemporaries the impression of greatness. In him seemed 
to be figured the grand outline of the future political life of the 
country, just beginning to take shape. His name has thus been 


312 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


intimately bound with the best American patriotic tradition, and 
one hesitates even to seem to lay irreverent hands on the expression 
of his genius. But Webster did not differ from other great men in 
being the child of his own generation. It is true that oratory from 
its very nature demands a magniloquent manner of expression, less 
pleasing than formerly, now that oratory itself is less whole-heartedly 
practised than once it was. One may indeed read the orations of 
Webster with regret that his ample flights are no longer possible, 
but it is true that what once was eloquent now seems overblown. 
Thus the famous Liberty and Union oration leads to this climax: 
‘‘When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the 
sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishon- 
ored fragments of a once glorious union—on States dissevered, dis- 
cordant, belligerent—on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched it 
may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering 
glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known 
and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced; its arms 
and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or 
polluted, nor a single star obscured,—bearing for its motto no such 
miserable interrogatory, as, ‘What is all this worth?’ Nor those 
other words of delusion and folly, ‘Liberty first, and Union after- 
ward’; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, 
blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the 
land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other senti- 
ment, dear to every true American heart—Liberty and Union, now 
and forever, one and inseparable!” This is perhaps magnificent, 
but no longer possible to the enfeebled children of a later generation. 
But Webster’s theatrical skill was nowhere more effectively displayed 
than in the supposed speech of John Adams, introduced into a Dis- 
course on Adams and Jefferson, August 2, 1826. The scene was 
deliberately arranged. Hancock is supposed to be presiding over 
the solemn sitting. A person not yet ready to pronounce for abso- 
lute independence is on the floor, with moderate eloquence urging 
reasons for delay. This speaker having finished, Adams ‘would 
commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness’ —‘‘Sink 


STYLE 313 


or swim, live or die, survive or perish’’—and so through the rest of 
the words which the powerful elocution of Webster must have made 
intensely moving. But the echoes of Webster’s voice have faded, 
his pose seems now lifeless and exaggerated. As in uproarious com- 
edy, the contagion of the moment was necessary to make this oratory 
effective. 

Even genuine feeling had to struggle hard to find a way through 
such an encumbering eloquence. ‘‘I migrated to the State of Ken- 
tucky,” said Henry Clay, in his last speech in the Senate, in March, 
1842, Benton, Thirty Years’ View, II, 401, ‘‘nearly forty-five years 
ago. I went there as an orphan, who had not yet attained his 
majority—who had never recognized a father’s smile—with an im- 
perfect and inadequate education, limited to the means applicable 
to such a boy;—but scarcely had I set foot upon that generous soil, 
before I was caressed with parental fondness—patronized with boun- 
teous munificence—and I may add to this, that her choicest honors, 
often unsolicited, have been freely showered upon me; and when I 
stood, as it were, in the darkest moments of human existence— 
abandoned by the world, calumniated by a large portion of my own 
countrymen, she threw around me her impenetrable shield, and bore 
me aloft, and repelled the attacks of malignity and calumny, by 
which I was assailed. Sir, it is to me an unspeakable pleasure that 
I am shortly to return to her friendly limits; and that I shall finally 
deposit (and it will not be long before that day arrives) my last 
remains under her generous soil, with the remains of her gallant and 
patriotic sons who have preceded me.” Thus spake Zarathustra, 
but never any ordinary mortal. 

Another of these demi-gods is portrayed at length in Baldwin’s 
Flush Times in Mississippi, pp. 197 ff. He was the Mississippi 
statesman, Sargent Smith Prentiss, ‘‘in the flower of his forensic 
fame” in 1837. He had, says Baldwin, ‘‘the talent of an Italian 
improvisatore, and could speak the thoughts of poetry with the 
inspiration of oratory, and in the tones of music. The fluency of his 
speech was unbroken—no syllable unpronounced—not a ripple in 
the smooth and brilliant tide. Probably he never hesitated for a 


314 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


word in his life. His diction adapted itself, without effort, to the 
thought; now easy and familiar, now stately and dignified, now 
beautiful and various as the hues of the rainbow, again compact, 
even rugged in sinewy strength, or lofty and grand in eloquent 
declamation.”’ When he spoke in public, “ladies surrounded the 
rostrum with their carriages.’”’ He reminded his Southern friends of 
Byron. He was the idol of Mississippi. On his first appearance in 
the House, he delivered a speech, ‘‘which if his fame rested upon it 
alone, for its manliness of tone, exquisite satire, gorgeous imagery, 
and argumentative power, would have rendered his name imperish- 
able.”’ Faded now are these imperishable glories, all melted away 
like the snows of other years. 

How large a place the fame of the orator occupied among the 
aspirations of American youth in the second quarter of the nine- 
teenth century can be readily seen by examining the many readers, 
speakers, and books of selections of the time. In McGuffey’s Rhe- 
torical Guide or Fifth Reader (1844), intended for the highest classes, 
in the part devoted to prose, orations occur much more frequently 
than any other kind of composition, the nearest rivals being essays 
of the school of Addison and Irving. Among the orations are found 
examples from British as well as American orators. Webster is rep- 
resented by five orations, including the Supposed Speech of John 
Adams, which has probably been recited by a larger number of 
American boys than any other monument of English literature. 
In Sanders’s School Reader, Fifth Book, 1848, orations are still more 
numerous, among the orators represented being Edward Everett, 
Fisher Ames, Edmund Randolph, Webster, Calhoun, Henry Clay, 
Madison, Jackson, besides Black Hawk, Black Thunder, and other 
Indian orators not specified by name. After illustrative citations 
from Indian orations, the prophecy is made, p. 216, that they “will 
be as enduring as the swan-like music of Attic and Roman eloquence, 
which was the funeral song of the liberties of those republics.” 

In all these schoolbook collections a great many of the orations 
are placed in the mouths of Indians. The patriotic orations all turn 
on the greatness and future glory of America. In them there was 


STYLE 315 


obviously no place for the pathetic and elegiac strain, and this lack 
the melancholy fate of the Indians in America abundantly supplied. 
The Indian became in time a stock figure for elegiac treatment. 
Freneau’s Indian Burying Ground and The Dying Indian are early 
examples, Percival’s Grave of the Indian Chief is romantically melan- 
choly, and tombs of Indians and Indian epitaphs were zealously 
described by the American antiquaries of the first half of the last 
century. As to Indian oratory, beginning with the earliest accounts, 
travelers and students of Indian customs have much to say about it. 
Undoubtedly the business of the tribe was often conducted by a 
method of public discussion. The eloquence of this oratory, how- 
ever, seems to have impressed observers little before eloquence be- 
came an American obsession. To discover the actual stylistic qual- 
ity of Indian oratory, as it was delivered, in the early colonial and 
national periods is not easy. None of it could be known except as 
it was interpreted, and the interpretation usually passed through 
several mediums, first that of the oral interpreter and then that of 
the literary transcriber. That the Indian vocabulary was concrete 
and metaphorical is certain, this being the general character of all 
slightly developed languages. But the idea of winter when trans- 
lated into the phrase, ‘‘the time of frozen waters,” or of summer as 
‘“‘the season of standing corn” may well seem more dignified and 
poetic in the translated phrases than they were intended to be in 
their originals. For the Indians, only those qualities of style were 
present in their speech which they felt to be there. The sentimental 
adapter of Indian speech, however, was hampered by no philological 
or ethnological scruples. His aim was to make Indian speech inter- 
esting to white people, not to reproduce it accurately, and as the 
Indian style of oratory readily lent itself to grandiloquent expansion, 
the path of the literary interpreter was clearly indicated. The first 
specimen of alleged Indian eloquence to become widely known was 
the supposed speech of Logan, which Jefferson printed in his Notes 
on Virginia, written in 1781 and 1782, and where he challenges “‘the 
whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent 
orator, if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single 


316 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


passage, superior to the speech of Logan.” It is not impossible, 
however, that Demosthenes and Cicero had something to do with 
the composition of the speech of Logan. The glorification of Indian 
oratory became more and more general after the publication of this 
speech, and it reached its height in the third and fourth decades of 
the nineteenth century. In Knapp’s Lectures on American Literature 
(1829), the first history of American literature, the chapter on Ameri- 
can oratory begins with a glowing account of the eloquence of the 
Indians. Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, in which the exalted figure 
of Tamenund moves, had appeared in 1826. Thatcher’s Indian 
Biography appeared in two volumes in 18382, and Stone’s Life of Red 
Jacket appeared in its first edition in 1840. Both of these books 
make a great deal of the Indian as orator. Ethnologists of more re- 
cent date, though they take account of the Indian custom of speech- 
ifying, have not so much to say about Indian eloquence. ‘The Indian 
as Ciceronian orator, aS in some other respects, seems to have been 
more the victim than the cause of American tradition. 


The general conditions which permitted the display oratory of 
the days of Webster and Calhoun have changed, in all probability 
never to return. In the first half of the nineteenth century, politics 
in America fought its combats within a definitely limited arena. 
The population of the country was then not great, it was still rela- 
tively homogeneous, and it was in the main settled along the At- 
lantic seaboard and in the neighboring row of states inland. It was 
possible for political affairs in such a society to be conducted with a 
good deal of personal and familiar feeling. One could appeal to the 
people because a single language, a single set of emotions and associ- 
ations, was intelligible to the people. With the growth of the coun- 
try to the West and Southwest, however, with the coming of vast 
armies of immigrants from lands in which English speech and tra- 
ditions were unknown, with the rise of the great self-centered cities 
of the East and West, North and South, it has become increasingly 
difficult to find a form of expression in public speaking which shall be 
both intimate and comprehensive. The most recent developments 


STYLE 317 


in internationalism at the expense of nationalism, if they go far 
enough, may also affect the practice of oratory. Will they provide 
a new grand idea for a new and exalted oratory? In the many 
speeches and messages of President Wilson the notion of world 
politics certainly inspired more eloquence than the notion of Ameri- 
can politics. The idea has imaginative appeal. Whether or not it 
has solidity, only time or the touchstone of a new Lincoln can tell. 
If it has solidity, however, one may safely prophesy that the ex- 
pression of it will take a form derived not from American popular 
style but from the standard literary style. 

The great event which pricked the bubble of American grandilo- 
quent oratory was the Civil War. Confronted with the dreadful 
seriousness of that experience, the theatrical forensics of the second 
quarter of the century were seen to be inadequate for a genuinely 
great occasion. The final blow was given to the old-fashioned ora- 
tory when Lincoln, himself a student of the older oratory, in a five- 
minute speech of intense sincerity and incredible simplicity, on the 
field of Gettysburg set a new mark for all later generations of public 
speakers in America. 


Another manifestation in America of the exuberant popular style 
appears in that kind of expression called slang, a thing of many 
aspects, readily recognized in experience though not always clearly 
definable. Slang does not flourish under all conditions. It requires 
an appropriate atmosphere for its successful growth. In general it 
is found in the speech of persons whose social relations are extensive, 
varied and animated. It is the product of the city rather than the 
country, of sophisticated rather than naive society. Historically it 
does not appear extensively in American records before the middle 
decades of the nineteenth century, and then it was an accompani- 
ment of the free and easy life which was developing in the picturesque 
politics of the time and in the new settlements of the West and South- 
west. On June 26, 1812, a few days after the declaration of war with 
England, Governor Caleb Strong of Massachusetts, spoke of England 
as ‘“‘the bulwark of the religion we profess,” Proceedings of the 


318 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


American Antiquarian Society, New Series, XIX, 24. The phrase 
bulwark of our religion as applied to England struck the heated fancy 
of the time as exquisitely grotesque and humorous. It spread like 
measles, for a decade bulwark and England were synonymous terms, 
and a new slang word had come into existence. Like most slang, 
however, it also soon passed out of existence. Society in America, 
however, had developed conditions in which slang could flourish and 
from this time the student of American slang finds himself plenti- 
fully provided with material. A new spirit of the times had come 
into being. 

The ephemeral campaign and political literature of the third and 
fourth decades of the last century was particularly rich in this ex- 
pressive popular lingo. Its variations are illustrated by Kendall 
(Timothy Tickle) in his Doleful Tragedy of the Raising of John Burn- 
ham, or The Cat Let Out of the Bag (1832). This play has as its theme 
the trickeries and betrayals of trust of a group of politicians organ- 
ized ostensibly to oppose the Masonic order but really to secure 
office for themselves. The play gives an interesting picture of 
“canting slang and rotten-cored profession,” the inner meaning of 
both now calling for not a little antiquarian annotation. Some of 
the phrases apparently at the time rich in connotation are equal 
rights; light; the old Handmaid; giant claims; loaves and fishes, or 
more briefly, loaves, meaning the spoils of office; outrage; the depravity 
of human nature; raise the wind, meaning to secure money for pub- 
licity purposes; the blessed spirit; to go the whole, to go the whole hog; 
a rush, a rush light, from the name of a politician named Rush; 
the star gazer; divan, a secret political organization; a rouser, a mildly 
sensational lie, preparatory to a thumper; come back or edge; Jacks 
and cable tows. ‘These and many other words and phrases like these 
in the play well illustrate how the highly colored vocabulary of 
one day becomes feeble and even meaningless as soon as the exciting 
causes of the moment have passed away. 

Politics being in the first half of the nineteenth century the most 
exciting of American pastimes, it was natural that slang should 
take its rise in political journalism and debate. But other groups of 


STYLE 319 


persons whose associations were intimate and animated have also 
developed extensive slang vocabularies. This has been especially 
true of sports, or activities with sporting associations, such as card 
playing, horse racing, prize fighting, baseball, golf, dog raising, col- 
lege life, in fact any situation in which personal contacts were 
close and exhilarating. Slang has flourished also in certain not too 
stable regions of the American business world, especially in that 
generically known as Wall Street. The language of these various 
activities, of the stock market, of the gambling table or racing field, 
readily becomes merely professional and technical. Words in busi- 
ness may originate strikingly and picturesquely, with the full flavor 
of slang, but by constant use as the definite names of definite things 
they lose their picturesque flavor and become merely literal names 
of things or ideas. If the social situation remains as it was, how- 
ever, that is, exciting and intimate, new slang terms will be constantly 
invented to give expression to experiences as they are freshly realized. 
By the time a professional slang word or phrase is put on record, 
however, it will probably already have passed into the class of literal 
English, or by discontinuance, have passed altogether out of use. 
The technical slang of sports, trades and occupations consequently 
has little significance for the student of the idioms of general English 
speech. Occasionally words pass from professional slang into gen- 
eral use, but in the main the slang of a profession is like the rest of its 
technical vocabulary, limited to the relatively small group in which 
it circulates. 

But political and professional activities have not been the only 
ones to produce slang in America. In ordinary social intercourse, in 
the relations of the man in the street to his neighboring man in the 
street, slang has flourished and continues to flourish. This slang of 
social conversation belongs naturally to the language of familiar and 
colloquial experience. All American conversation is not colored by 
slang, and the greater the degree of formality and conventionality, 
the less favorable are the conditions for slang. The peculiar proy- 
ince of slang lies on the lower popular level, and on that level it has 
been elaborately developed. Certain writers like George Ade and 


320 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Wallace Irwin have even utilized this slang for literary purposes, 
have written in what practically amounts to a slang dialect. The 
thought clothed in this form has been simple and humorous, but the 
combination of a familiar content and an amusing form has been irre- 
sistible to the American public. Successful slang writers have built 
up not inconsiderable literary reputations and very considerable 
fortunes. British literature has nothing parallel to this slang lit- 
erature of America. Whatever the relative proportions of slang in 
British and in American speech may be, certainly slang has not been 
printed as much in England as in America. Here it is a recognized 
form of public entertainment. In a popular magazine like the Sat- 
urday Evening Post, for example, one can count on a certain pro- 
portion of slang in any issue, both the specialized slang of baseball 
and other professions and the general slang of social relationships. 
These slang words and phrases may be colored with the peculiar 
quality of slang merely from their grotesque sound associations or 
they may be striking and picturesque metaphors. Slang words of 
the former type are such words as oodles, ‘‘abundance,’’ flabber- 
gasted, spondulics, mollycoddle, biff, blooey (an automobile is blooey 
when it fails to run just right), dinky, dotty, scrumptious, skeezicks, 
snoop, foozle, frazzle, woozy, blurb, mugwump. Word perversions of 
this type are well illustrated in many of the creations of Lewis 
Carroll’s humorous poems. Thus burble seems to have been sug- 
gested by gurgle and bubble, tulgy by bulge, frabjious by joyous, 
beamish by the alliteration with boy and by gleam and beam, vorpal 
by vortical, a vorpal blade being a whirling blade, slithy by lithe 
and slimy. 

These words depend for their effect upon a violent contrast be- 
tween the sound of a conventionally expected word and of the word 
actually heard. They cannot be reduced to definite pictures and 
may be described as humorous word echoes. They are much more 
characteristic of British than of American slang, the violent con- 
trasts of concrete images found in the latter being generally offensive 
to British taste, except as exotics. The commonly occurring slang 
words in British use are words like bally, bash, bloke, lugs, swank, 


{ 
| 
f 
. 


STYLE 321 


tizzy, a sixpence, or feeble metaphors like beastly, blooming, priceless. 
Another kind of British slang is that which rests upon abbreviation 
of frequently occurring conventional phrases, such as snatch a hasty, 
that is, a hasty lunch or tea, wazt a sec, ever so, ever so much obliged, 
future, for future wife, digs, for diggings, Aussze for Australian, 
brolly for umbrella, etc. This kind of slang is of course not unknown 
in American use, but the genuine expert in American slang would 
probably regard it as weak and effeminate, entirely too obvious and 
infantile in method to be deserving of his notice. 

Examples of striking picturesque metaphor in American slang 
are legion. It is in this direction that the artist in slang exerts him- 
self. No metaphor is too remote for him, no allusion too subtle. 
Novelty is the very breath of life to the artist in slang. This quest 
for freshness naturally causes the slang of the moment to become 
archaic with the passing of the moment. Illustrations must almost 
necessarily belong to the history of slang, but antiquated examples 
are just as useful for illustrating the psychological processes as the 
last word. Thus warm or hot society, meaning gay society, is vigor- 
ously self-explanatory; bunch, a number of persons or a number of 
anything not usually tied in bunches suggests its metaphorical origin. 
A lemon can be an unpleasant person, experience, remark, anything 
not sweet or agreeable. A hat may be a scream by the same process 
as that which the poet employs when a smile becomes a summer’s 
day. Ora hat becomes a lid. One can freeze on to a thing when one 
holds it fast, as water freezes to cold metal. The science of bac- 
teriology has brought certain new ideas within the limits of popular 
apprehension, especially the notion of germs. The germ, however, 
becomes a bug, and so a person with a particular fad or notion is said 
to have that bug, or to be bug house in a certain direction. Some 
slang has local associations, like tenderfoot, cinch, corral, and an infinite 
number of words from the West. Sometimes slang is complicated 
in its suggestiveness, like cackleberry, meaning egg. This word might 
be reduced to a mathematical formula as follows: 


cackle berry egg 


huckle egg  cackleberry 


322 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The metaphor sometimes depends on a phrase, as in nobody home, 
meaning you do not get me, you have not caught on, you are off the 
trolley, etc., or Good night as a general expression of finality. Or it 
may be a generalization derived from an individual or personal 
quality, as in Jonah, meaning anything or any person that brings 
bad luck, or the reverse mascot, something which brings good luck, 
usually a living animal, from La Mascotte, the luck-bringing heroine 
of a French comic opera popular in America in the last quarter of the 
nineteenth century. 

To exhaust all the psychological types and sub-types of American 
slang would be a tedious and unprofitable undertaking. The same 
general qualities would be found in all of them, a keen sense of im- 
mediacy, of intimate social understanding, of soul-satisfying com- 
pleteness, of violent and comic incongruity. With all its vivid 
differentiation, the psychology of slang is relatively simple. Its 
quality always depends primarily on contrast heightened to the point 
of the grotesque. To this is commonly added an abnormally active 
sense of community life of the social group in which the slang circu- 
lates. A common understanding is supposed, not the common 
understanding of ordinary experience, but something special, like 
the feeling for the “‘gang”’ or the ‘‘set”’ or the ‘‘swim.”’ 

The picturesque metaphor of slang as it has been used in popular 
American expression has certain manifest virtues, but also obvious 
limitations. It is usually concrete, direct and vigorous, but it makes 
the mistake of saying everything and leaving nothing to the imag- 
ination. It is too adequate, too pat. A hat is a lid by a very ap- 
propriate metaphor. A hat fits a head as a lid fits a pot—nothing 
could be more apt or more final. But when one gets the point, there 
is nothing more to get. The metaphor leaves nothing unrealized, 
nothing to be imagined. It is like a remorselessly precise epithet, so 
completely satisfactory that it removes the situation from further 
human interest. The literary value of such a style is obviously low. 
One can admire or smile at the ingenuity employed in securing so 
striking a metaphor or epithet, but the mechanical perfection of the 
complete adaptation of the image to its purpose can have only a 


STYLE 323 


momentary and mechanical interest. This character of finality is 
found not infrequently in popular speech. Persons of limited but 
absolutely certain experience sometimes express themselves with a 
picturesque precision and conclusiveness of effect which seems as 
unsought and unescapable as a happening in the world of nature. 
Their figures are on the same level imaginatively as the platitude in 
the intellectual world. The striking metaphors of slang are imag- 
inative platitudes, fatal to genuine poetry. As slang always arises 
in concrete and familiar situations, in it a highly effective machinery 
of expression is applied to a relatively low order of thought. 

As it has occurred in American popular style, slang cannot there- 
fore be taken as evidence of an unusual elevation in the imaginative 
activity of the American mind. Slang is not the seed and promise 
of greater things to come, but a trivial by-product of things already 
existing. Lowell’s confident expectation, expressed in the intro- 
duction to the Second Series of the Biglow Papers two generations 
and more ago, has not been realized. He regarded American extrav- 
agance of expression as ‘‘more fitly to be called intensity and pic- 
turesqueness, symptoms of the imaginative faculty in full health 
and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw and formless 
material in which poetry is to work. By and by, perhaps, the world 
will see it fashioned into poem and picture, and Europe, which will 
be hard pushed for originality erelong, may have to thank us for a 
new sensation.”’ And he adds later, that ‘‘it may well be that the 
life, invention, and vigor shown by our popular speech, and the free- 
dom with which it is shaped to the instant want of those who use 
it, are the best omen for our having a swan at last.”” But the omen 
of popular speech did not really point in the direction of poetic swans. 
Slang uses have been abundant and striking in American speech 
because among the people American social contacts have been varied 
and rapid, because American popular life during the past three or 
four generations has been forced in a genial atmosphere of prosperity, 
of good nature, of pleasant adventure. This liking for a cataclysmic 
figurative expression in America has sometimes been accounted for 
as a survival of the Elizabethan spirit. It was not that, for it does not 


324 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


vigorously manifest itself until the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. One may say, however, that the social conditions which 
explain the verbal ingenuities of the Elizabethan writers were in some 
respects similar to those which have favored the development of a 
violent metaphorical style in popular American speech. The verbal 
eccentricities of the Elizabethans, however, are not the measure of 
their greatness. From the literary point of view, they are merely 
defects negligible in the light of more admirable imaginative achieve- 
ments. So also American slang is merely the iridescent froth blown 
from the surface of the deep but troubled ocean of American imag- 
inative experience. Whether or not these profounder imaginative 
experiences have been otherwise and more adequately recorded in 
literature is another question, but certainly it is true that they have 
not been recorded in slang literature, nor is it true that American slang 
is an index of the existence of them. 


Besides the hyperbolical style of oratory and of picturesque 
exaggeration, American popular expression has employed only one 
other manner, one which in many respects seems the exact opposite 
to the exuberant style. This second manner may be described as 
the reluctant or rustic philosophic style. In this style, under cover 
of an apparent handicap, for example, that of unconventional, even 
ungrammatical and illiterate language, the philosopher nevertheless 
succeeds in uttering sagacious or penetrating or poetic criticisms of 
life and of men. On the spoken side the method is well described in 
Mark Twain’s “How to Tell a Story.” The main requirement, ac- 
cording to Mark Twain, in successful story telling before an audience 
is a drawl and an appearance of utter guilelessness and simplicity. 
This is of course a dramatic device, useful for grotesque contrast. 
The story teller’s seeming obtuseness causes the hearer to realize 
the more keenly the sagacity or comedy of the story. The pose was 
one peculiarly adapted to American taste and convictions. If all 
men are created free and equal, if one man is as good as another, 
and maybe a little better, obviously there is no reason why the wis- 
dom and eloquence of the homespun philosopher may not be as 


STYLE 325 


excellent as that of the polished man of letters. If this conviction 
is seasoned with a dash of scepticism, with some sense of an amusing 
contrast, the pose is no less interesting. The rustic philosopher, it 
may be assumed, is only the victim of circumstances. If essentials 
are the only things that count, his crudities are then merely the acci- 
dents which set off more clearly by contrast his native virtues.’ 

The first successful exponent of reluctant rustic wit appeared in 
the character of Major Jack Downing in the letters contributed to 
newspapers by Seba Smith. These letters began to appear in the 
Daily Courier of Portland, Maine, in 1830, and immediately gained 
wide popularity. They were later collected and published as a vol- 
ume, My Thirty Years Out of the Senate, by Major Jack Downing 
(1859). Before 1830 the upland Yankee, uncouth in body and 
speech, but wise and masterful beneath his unpromising exterior, 
had already figured in comedies and plays, where indeed he had 
become something of a comic stock figure. In Major Downing, 
however, the character was first amplified sufficiently to make it self- 
supporting. This rustic philosopher and his numerous imitations 
was as distinctly a product of New England as the half-horse half- 
alligator orator was of the Southwest. Jack Downing was a simple- 
minded villager from Downingville, situated ‘‘jest about in the 
middle of Down East.’ Here Jack grew up in the great traditions 
of the Revolutionary War, passed on to him by his grandfather. 
His mother declared he was ‘‘the smartest baby that she ever see,”’ 
and before he was a week old, he showed that he was ‘‘real grit, and 
could kick and scream two hours upon the stretch, and not seem to 
be the least bit tired that ever was.’”’ When he was six years old he 
went sliding on the ice, barefoot, because he had no shoes. “I car- 
ried a great pine chip in my hand,” he explains, p. 26, ‘‘and when 
my feet got so cold I couldn’t stand it no longer, I’d put the chip 
down and stand on that a little while and warm ’em, and then at it 
to sliding again.”” From this it will be seen that Jack’s pedigree 
is not altogether unmixed with a strain of the horse and alligator 


1 For an historical account of some of these early American humorists, see Tandy, 
The Cracker-box Philosophers in American Humor and Satire, New York, 1925. 


326 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


breed. When Jack had grown up to be right smart of a boy, he set 
out to make his way in the world. ‘‘So I tackled up the old horse,”’ 
he says, p. 33, ‘‘and packed in a load of ax-handles and a few notions, 
and mother fried me some doughnuts and put ’em into a box along 
with some cheese and sassages, and ropped me up another shirt,” 
and off he drove for Portland. He had not been in Portland long 
before he happened to ‘‘blunder into the Legislater’’ and thus the 
setting for his activities is made complete. He writes back letters 
to the folks at Downingville, commenting in the tone of doughnuts 
and sausages on the men and policies of the Jacksonian era. 
Though Jack Downing has long since been forgotten by all except 
the literary historian, the literary device which his letters illustrate 
still has a familiar ring. Major Downing was the immediate spirit- 
ual ancestor of Hosea Biglow and a host of other minor rustic critics 
of life and manners. As the abundance of these characters shows, 
the American sense of propriety was not shocked by this seemingly 
irreverent way of treating serious things. Since the momentous 
affairs of life were not supposedly in the hands only of an accredited 
higher class, decorum could not be violated by treating them in a 
lowly way. ‘There seemed indeed a special piquancy in empha- 
sizing the lowliness of the treatment. The most simple-minded 
could scarcely be as simple as Josh Billings or Petroleum V. Nasby 
or Artemus Ward were made to seem. The style lent itself to 
extravagance, but inevitably the extravagance of the method em- 
ployed caused the span of life of these various characters to be very 
brief. Illiterate spelling and bad grammar cannot in themselves be 
made permanently interesting devices, though the pose of simplicity, 
sufficiently varied, has never failed of its effect. Senator Sorghum 
and Farmer Corntossel still find a place for their wise and humorous 
sayings in the lower right-hand corner of the newspaper page, and 
new disguises for the old trick are continually being devised. The 
native illiterate has also provided the model for the foreign dialect 
philosopher, as in the musings of Peter Finley Dunne’s Mr. Dooley, 
and in the wise and childlike sayings of Wallace Irwin’s Japanese 
schoolboy writing about things American to his friends in Japan. 


STYLE 327 


The popularity of this device seems now, however, to be on the wane. 
Rusticity and illiteracy are not now as amusing as they were a few 
generations ago in America. In a day when it was some distinction 
to be able to spell, when a Congressman like Davy Crockett must 
acknowledge humbly that he could not spell and punctuate, great 
possibilities of comic contrast lay in the pose of illiteracy. But 
society has now become more uniform. The illiterate person to-day 
is likely not to seem amusing, but merely stupid or unfortunate. 

To the question whether these two popular literary styles, the 
exaggerated hyperbolical style and the reluctant simple style, also 
exaggerated in its different way, are the beginnings of what may 
develop in America into a new and genuinely individual literary 
style, the answer must be in the negative. For one thing, the popu- 
lar styles have already had the chance to realize themselves in works 
of lasting literary significance and have failed to do so. For over a 
hundred years, that is throughout the whole of the productive period 
of American literature, these styles have been in existence, but in 
them no single work has been written which Americans cherish as 
expressing their national literary aspirations. The life of writings 
of this kind has always been short, though it may have been hilarious 
while it lasted. But writings in exaggerated popular styles must 
necessarily be parasitic in their nature. An extremely violent style 
or an extremely simple style can only be extreme when contrasted 
with a normal and moderate central style. The extreme style can 
be endured only for a moment as a grotesque parody of the sane 
and normal literary experience to which one must always return as 
providing the test of values by which the worth of all eccentricities 
is measured. Like its past, therefore, the future of American lit- 
erary style will doubtless be determined by respect for moderation, 
for tradition, for good workmanship, for a more dependable perfection 
in the difficult art of writing than can come from demonic seizures 
or from the rude simplicity that often accompanies vivid personal 
contacts. 


AMERICAN SPELLING 


Though seemingly a mechanical matter of intrinsically little 
importance, from the time of the early grammarians to the present 
day of simplified spelling boards and societies, English spelling has 
claimed a large share of attention in all critical discussions of the 
language. And though American customs in spelling have never 
differed widely from British, such differences as have existed have 
nevertheless been treated as though they were matters of some 
moment, as though the Americans had really done something star- 
tling to spelling. What they might have done is, of course, quite a 
different affair from what they have done. English spelling at any 
time within the last three hundred years has offered great oppor- 
tunities for the exercise of ingenious reform, and consequently as 
great opportunities for restraint in the exercise of reform. On the 
whole, Americans, like the British, have been conservative in their 
treatment of spelling, and the notion that American spelling is 
radical and revolutionary seems indeed to be mainly a survival from 
eighteenth and early nineteenth century political feeling. 

At first thought it would appear that spelling, being merely the 
symbolic representation of speech by means of visible signs, should 
be very directly under the control of the practical intelligence. And 
in fact, to a large extent it is so. Nothing is easier than the pastime 
of devising schemes of spelling which, by all tests of common sense, 
are better in many respects than the spellings which happen to be in 
current use. The difficulty lies not in the invention of reasonable 
reforms, but in securing their general acceptance. ‘The spelling of 
the English language became fixed in approximately its present form 
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The sounds of the 
language have changed in many respects since the close of the Middle 


English period, but the changes in spelling have not kept pace with 
328 


AMERICAN SPELLING 329 


the changes in pronunciation. Supported by the authority of the 
schools, and of the dictionaries when they came to be made, literary 
tradition has fixed the conventional English spelling in an almost 
impregnable position. A few changes in detail have made their way, 
but of the many proposals for a thoroughgoing reform of English 
spelling that have been urged from time to time during the past 
three centuries, none has ever acquired much more than a theoretical 
significance, even in America. | 

So long as the American colonies remained appendages to the 
mother country, little special attention seems to have been paid in 
them to the matter of spelling. It was doubtless generally assumed 
that spelling was a blessing, of more or less qualified character, to be 
received without question, as other gifts were received from across 
the water. With the establishment of the colonies in an independent 
position, however, a new attitude was taken with respect to the 
English language as it was then spoken and written. To the Ameri- 
can reformers and revolutionists of the end of the eighteenth century, 
the time seemed unusually propitious for the advent of a reign of 
reason. In spelling, it was obvious then, as now, that the most logi- 
cal and rational method of reform was one which called for a recon- 
struction of the alphabet and such invention of new characters as 
would make possible the representation of the sounds of the language 
with precision and regularity. As early as 1768 Benjamin Franklin 
had elaborated A Scheme for a New Alphabet and Reformed Mode of 
Spelling,' which contained only six new symbols, but which utilized 
the traditional symbols in a new and independent manner. Except 
for two passages of verse, each of six lines, which he transcribed into 
his phonetic alphabet as illustrations of its workings, and a letter in 
phonetic script, addressed to an English correspondent who thought 
there would be ‘‘many inconveniences, as well as difficulties,” that 
would attend the bringing of the new letters and orthography into 
common use, Franklin seems not to have done anything with his 
alphabet. Of the difficulties which stood in the way of securing a 
general acceptance of a new alphabet, Franklin was fully aware, but 


1 Works, ed. Bigelow, IV, 198-209. 


330 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


he declared that ‘‘ whatever the difficulties and inconveniences now 
are, they will be more easily surmounted now, than hereafter; and 
some time or other it must be done.” ! 

Several other early proposals for a reformed system of spelling 
in America may be noted. William Thornton, in Cadmus, 1793, 
proposed a full scheme of reform, and he exhorts the citizens of 
America, having now “corrected the dangerous doctrines of Euro- 
pean powers,” to correct also the language in which the life of the 
New World is to be expressed. ‘‘The American Language will thus 
be as distinct,’ declares Thornton, ‘‘as the government, free from 
all the follies of unphilosophical fashion, and resting upon truth as 
its only regulator. I perceive no difficulties: if you find any, I trust 
they are not without remedy.” James Ewing’s Columbian Alpha- 
bet, ‘being an attempt to new model the English alphabet,” which 
appeared at Trenton, in 1798, and William Pelham’s System of No- 
tation, Boston, 1808, a very elaborate attempt to record the language 
phonetically, are entitled to mention at least as among the curiosities 
of orthographical literature.? 

A few years after its first publication, when Noah Webster 


1 Works, ed. Bigelow, IV, p.208. From the letter in phonetic script mentioned above. 

2 As evidence of the early and continued interest in orthographic reform, some 
further titles may be appended: Monalpha, by Amasa D. Sproat, Chillicothe, Ohio, 
1807, an 8-page folder outlining a kind of visible speech alphabet; Sketch of a plan 
and method of Education [with a new alphabet], by Joseph Neef, Philadelphia, 1808; 
Elements of Orthography, or an attempt to form a complete system of letters . . . The 
first proposition of this idea was published in the Columbian Magazine, of July, 1791. 
Since which time the subject has laid dormant. By J. G. Chambers, Zanesville, Ohio, 
1812; Orthography Corrected, by Thomas Embree, Philadelphia, 1813; Philosophy of 
the Human Voice, James Rush, Philadelphia, 1827; An Essay on Learning to Read and 
Write the English Language, by W. R. Weeks [Proceedings American Lyceum, Sept., 
1832], New York, 18382; Key to the new system of Orthography, by Abner Kneeland, 
Boston, 1832; Something New, comprising a new and perfect alphabet containing 40 
distinct characters, by M. H. Barton, Boston, 1833; A New System of Orthography, 
by N. Nash, Philadelphia, 1836; Pantography, by B. J. Antrim, Philadelphia, 1843; 
New Project for Reforming the English Alphabet . . . by Ezekiel Rich . . . praying 
the assistance of Congress . . . Feb. 19, 1844. Read and laid upon the table. [28th 
Congress. lst Session. H. R. Doc. No. 126]; Thoughts on a Reform of the English 
Alphabet and Orthography, New York, 1846; Orthography become Phonography. <A 
homographic introduction to the English language, by J. P. Hart, New Haven, Ct., 
1847; Analytic Orthography, by S. S. Haldeman, Philadelphia, 1860. Later treatises 
are legion. 


AMERICAN SPELLING 331 


entered upon his campaign for nationalizing the English language in 
America, for creating a Federal English, he took up with enthusiasm 
Franklin’s project for a phonetic alphabet. Franklin’s interest in 
the matter had not died out, and he eagerly welcomed the arrival of 
this new disciple. In 1786 Webster drew up ‘‘a plan for the purpose 
of reducing the orthography of the language to perfect regularity, 
with as few new characters and alterations of the old ones as pos- 
sible,’ which he submitted by letter to Franklin, Ford, Notes on the 
Life of Noah Webster, II, 455. In reply, Franklin gave the proposal 
his general approval, and declared that the reformation was ‘‘not 
only necessary but practicable.’”’ Webster did not shut his eyes to 
the fact that various attempts to promulgate a phonetic alphabet 
in England had “proved fruitless,’ but he added, *‘I conceive they 
failed through some defect in the plans proposed, or for reasons that 
do not exist in this country.”” In America, ‘‘the minds of the people 
are in a ferment, and consequently disposed to receive improve- 
ments,’ so much so, in Webster’s opinion, that he is led to hope that 
‘“‘most of the Americans may be detached from an implicit adherence 
to the language and manners of the British nation,’ Notes, II, 456. 
While lecturing in New York in 1786, Webster wrote to a corre- 
spondent, Notes I, 114, that ‘‘the Chairman of Congress, many other 
members, and about one hundred of the first ladies and gentlemen 
in the city are my hearers and the number is increasing. They fall in 
with my plan, and there is no longer a doubt that I shall be able to 
effect a uniformity of language and education throughout this con- 
tinent.”’ If this statement now seems absurd, it does so not as an 
ideal but in the expectation Webster expressed of the early realization 
of the ideal. 

In furtherance of his plan, Webster suggested to Franklin that he 
secure the approval of Washington, who had expressed, he says, ‘‘the 
warmest wishes for the success of my undertaking to refine the lan- 
guage,’ and who would, he thinks, “‘undoubtedly commence its 
advocate”’ if he were made acquainted with the new phonetic alpha- 
bet. Thus gently Franklin is shown how he could make himself 
useful. With the support of ‘a few distinguished characters” who 


332 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


might give such weight to the undertaking as to crush the opposition 
of ‘‘the enemies of our independence,’ Webster recommended to 
Franklin that the alphabet be then presented to Congress for action 
by that body. What Webster apparently had in mind was the cre- 
ation of a fiat language, and the hope he seems to have cherished for 
the success of such an undertaking is characteristic of the pathetic 
faith of men in the early days of the American republic in the power 
of government to cure all the evils of life by edict and decree. To 
Webster’s program of action, Franklin gave only a qualified assent. 
He asked for further discussion, and remarked that he had ‘‘formerly 
consider’d this matter pretty fully, and contriv’d some of the means 
of carrying it into Execution, so as gradually to render the Reforma- 
tion general,’”’ Notes, II, 457. 

One is not surprised to find that the proposed reformation became 
general neither suddenly nor gradually. In itself the project was 
not novel, and it has seemed worth while dwelling on it for a moment 
only because its failure shows how little effect theoretical reforms of 
language had upon men’s minds, even in the days when their minds 
were most open to innovation and reform. With all its respect for 
Franklin’s wisdom and good sense, the American public was not 
ready to follow him into schemes of reform which called for a com- 
plete reconstruction of so complicated a set of social habits as were 
involved in spelling. Nor was Franklin himself enough of a zealot 
to follow up his suggestions in solitary enthusiasm. The disciple- 
ship of Webster seemed promising at the start, but Webster was 
above all a practical, not a theoretical reformer. Even while he was 
toying with the idea of a phonetic alphabet, he was engaged in pre- 
paring and advertising to the public his elementary books of instruc- 
tion for which no sale could have been expected, had they made use 
of an invented phonetic alphabet. He yielded to practical necessity, 
for if Dr. Franklin did not succeed with his project, how could any 
one else, he asks some years later, hope for success. ‘‘ The attempts 
are vain.” * In his American Spelling Book, Webster made no 
attempt at all to indicate pronunciations by means of reformed spell- 


1 Brief View, p. 6. See also American Dictionary (1828), Introduction (unpaged). 


AMERICAN SPELLING 333 


ings. He divided the words into syllables, and this he thought was 
the easiest, and therefore the best way of indicating the true pro- 
nunciation. As a further aid, he sometimes placed numerals over 
the vowels which referred to the several qualities which the same 
symbol might have. Still later he expressed himself as convinced 
that the only practicable way to indicate English pronunciation was 
by the use of diacritics and special markings, his point of departure 
being the sounds of the alphabet as they are indicated in the names 
of the letters. 

In a note to the Preface of the dictionary of 1806, p. vi, Webster 
remarked, somewhat disingenuously, that ‘‘in the year 1776, Dr. 
Franklin proposed to me to prosecute his scheme of a Reformed 
Alphabet, and offered me his types for the purpose. I declined 
accepting his offer, on a full conviction of the utter impracticability, 
as well as inutility of the scheme. The orthography of our language 
might be rendered sufficiently regular, without a single new charac- 
ter, by means of a few trifling alterations of the present characters, 
and retrenching a few superfluous letters, the most of which are cor- 
ruptions of the original words.’”’ These views remained unchanged 
in the American Dictionary of 1828, where Webster repeated in the 
Introduction that ‘‘the mode of ascertaining the proper pronuncia- 
tion of words by marks, points and trifling alterations of the present 
characters, seemed to be the only one which can be reduced to 
practice.” This was the characteristic contribution of the Webster 
dictionaries to the popular understanding of phonetics in America 
and remains to-day the chief obstacle in the way of securing a treat- 
ment of the subject in elementary books which is based on scientific 
principles. 

One other compromise experiment by Webster may be noted, not 
because of its greater success, but because its wider circulation in 
one of Webster’s books brought it to the attention of a larger circle 
of observers. In his Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings, pub- 
lished in 1790, Webster attempted a reform of English spelling 
without using any new symbols, his innovations being the omission 
of silent letters and the application of analogy to groups of spellings 


334 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


for the purpose of getting rid of anomalies. Thus for ch = k (karac- 
ter), s = 2 (reezon), 0 = u (abuv), ea = ee (reeder), etc., Webster 
printed only the latter symbol—or at least theoretically printed only 
the latter symbol, for his actual practice was very inconsistent. 
The liberty he here took with English spelling “‘waz taken,” he says, 
‘“‘by the writers [why not riters?] before the age of Queen Elizabeth, 
and to this we are indebted for the preference of modern spelling 
over that of Gower and Chaucer,” Essays, p. xi. The man who 
admits ‘‘that the change of housbonde, mynde, ygone, moneth, into 
husband, mind, gone, month, iz an improovement, must acknowledge 
also the riting of helth, breth, rong [wrong], tung, munth, to be an 
improovement. There iz no alternativ.” ‘Every possible reezon,”’ 
he continues, ‘‘that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of 
wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not 
be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the 
influence of reezon than our ancestors.’”’ But alas for the influence 
of reason! The spelling of the Essays was greeted with scorn and 
ridicule. Even Webster’s friends would not follow him. Jeremy 
Belknap was very severe in ‘‘reprobating” the innovations of Web- 
ster, ‘‘critick and coxcomb general of the United States,’ Ford, 
Notes, I, 297. In acknowledging the receipt of a copy of the Essays, 
Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, expressed the opinion that Webster 
had “put in the pruning Knife too freely for general Acceptance,” 
Notes, I, 288. Others refused to read even those writings of Web- 
ster which were not written in the offensive spelling. Not being of 
the stern stuff of which great reformers are made, Webster soon 
yielded even this modified scheme of spelling reform. It is amusing 
to find him employing occasional reformed spellings in his diary 
about the year 1790, but the fever soon passed and in later entries 
the cherished principle of analogy was almost forgotten. Webster 
was too shrewd a Yankee not to see that the advocacy of what 
seemed to his contemporaries to be extreme reforms, even though 
they were essentially reasonable, might cause him to be regarded as 
visionary and doctrinaire, a kind of reputation that would have been 
fatal to his influence and to the reputation of his elementary edu- 


AMERICAN SPELLING 335 


cational books. His desire ‘‘to correct popular errors”? and his 
patriotism were beyond question both sincere, but these ideals were 
combined in his character with a very keen business sense and an 
ear for popular approval which sometimes served to check the purer 
impulses. It was made very evident to him that though America 
in 1790 was patriotic, her patriotism was not of a kind to lead her 
to reject altogether the bonds of association which held her to the 
literature of the English race. Spelling then as now was not merely 
a rational, but also an emotional matter, and the emotions which 
centered about it were not political, but civilizational and traditional 
in the widest sense. In determining the forms which American 
spelling was to take, Webster undoubtedly exerted some influence, 
but this influence operated through his spelling books and diction- 
aries, not through the radical proposals of the phonetic alphabet or 
the modified, but still radical experiments of the Hssays. The main 
result of these radical proposals has been to leave a vague traditional 
feeling on the part of some Englishmen that American spelling is 
extreme and grotesque. 

Webster’s spelling books preceded his dictionaries. His first dic- 
tionary appeared in 1806, but his first speller was Part I of A Gram- 
matical Institute of the English Language, Comprising An easy, con- 
cise, and systematic Method of Education, Designed for the Use of 
English Schools in America. In Three Parts. Part I, containing a 
“new and accurate standard of pronunciation”? was published at 
Hartford, in 1783. The book which was most commonly used in 
American schools for elementary instruction in English before Web- 
ster’s Grammatical Institute appeared was Thomas Dilworth’s 
Guide to the English Tongue, the work of an English schoolmaster 
which was often reprinted in America. This book of Dilworth’s was 
devised as ‘‘a speedy way of teaching Children to read,” and it con- 
tained tables of words for spelling, a grammar, short passages for 
reading, ‘‘adorned with proper sculptures” [i.e., engravings], and it 
concluded with a set of prayers for children, very much after the 
fashion of the older primers in use in church schools. A glance at 
Dilworth shows that if this was the book generally employed for 


306 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


elementary instruction in English, there was every reason, besides 
the patriotic one of teaching American children from American 
books, for the composition of a book to take its place. And yet 
Webster’s speller in its earliest edition, not only in construction and 
outward appearance, but also in method, closely resembled Dilworth. 
Though he thought that ‘for America in her infancy to adopt the 
present maxims of the old world would be to stamp the wrinkle of 
decrepit age upon the bloom of youth,” these sentiments did not 
prevent him from recording such orthodox spellings as honour, favour, 
and even expressly commending them, see the Grammatical Insti- 
tute, p. 11. But these spellings soon disappeared in the succeeding 
editions of the book, which gradually came to be modified also in 
content. Beginning with the edition of 1789, the First Part of the 
Grammatical Institute was called the American Spelling Book, a title 
which was long retained. 

In the edition of 1798, described on the title page as the seven- 
teenth, 124 of the 156 pages of the book are taken up with the ele- 
ments of pronunciation, spelling, and reading. Then follows a short 
introduction to grammar, pp. 125-137, a few further passages for 
reading, and in an appendix, ‘‘A Moral Catechism or Lessons for 
Saturday,” and a brief ‘‘Federal Catechism,” containing a short 
explanation of the Constitution of the United States and the princi- 
ples of government. In later editions the grammatical section was 
omitted, Webster having treated this subject more fully in the second 
part of his Grammatical Institute, but the moral parts he seems to 
have regarded as important and in some editions he amplified them. 
They contain precepts of a general kind, both of spiritual and worldly 
application, but much less exclusively pious and religious than in 
older books like Dilworth’s. This change is one of the many results 
of the secularization of education in New England, but is indicative 
also of Webster’s own rationalist opinions at this period of his life. 
The hold of these sentiments on popular interest may be seen from 
Samuel Woodworth’s Deed of Gift, a comic opera, published in 1822. 
In this play, Mrs. Barton, a village bluestocking in Massachusetts, 
continually quotes wise sayingsfrom Webster, and also continually uses 


AMERICAN SPELLING 307 


big words out of their proper senses. Though not himself held up to 
ridicule, Webster sharestosomeextent inthe absurdity of Mrs. Barton. 

Webster’s procedure in the American Spelling Book was on the 
whole very conservative. Acknowledging that the orthography of 
the language was not yet settled with precision, he did not attempt 
a complete reform, but established his spelling on the authority of the 
“most approved authors of the last and present century.’”’ While 
granting that the spelling of such words as publick, favour, neighbour, 
head, prove, phlegm, his, give, debt, rough, well has the ‘‘plea of an- 
tiquity in its favour,” he records his conviction that ‘‘common 
sense and convenience will sooner or later get the better of the present 
absurd practice,”’ and will bring about the ‘“‘more rational and easy ”’ 
spellings public, favor, nabor, hed, proov, flem, hiz, giv, det, ruf, wel. 
Nevertheless he had not the courage of this conviction, and in the 
body of the book he retained in general the more conservative spell- 
ings. In the spelling of names of places peculiar to America, he 
allowed himself more liberty. In these he thought “the orthogra- 
phy should coincide with the true pronunciation.” ‘‘To retain old 
difficulties may be absurd,’ he continues, “but to create them, 
without the least occasion, is folly in the extreme.”’ In the revised 
edition of the American Spelling Book he returned to this point and 
discussed it more in detail. ‘‘The orthography of Indian names,” 
he remarks, ‘‘has not, in every instance, been well adjusted by 
American authors. Many of these names still retain the French 
orthography, found in the writings of the first discoverers or early 
travelers, but the practice of writing such words in the French manner 
ought to be discountenanced. How does an unlettered American 
know the pronunciation of the names Ouisconsin or Ouabasche, in 
this French dress? Would he suspect the pronunciation to be Wis- 
consin and Waubash? Our citizens ought not to be thus perplexed 
with an orthography to which they are strangers. Nor ought the 
harsh guttural sounds of the natives to be retained in such words 
as Shawangunk,’ and many others. Where popular practice has 

1 Webster records the word as pronounced Shongum, and gives this as a variant 


spelling in his lists (see edition of 1831, pp. 135, 140). Only the spelling Shawangunk 
has persisted and this spelling has determined the pronunciation of the word. 


338 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


softened and abridged words of this kind, the change has been made 
in conformity to the genius of our language, which is accommodated 
to a civilized people, and the orthography ought to be conformed to 
the practice of speaking. The true pronunciation of the name of a 
place is that which prevails in and near the place.” 

The spellings of the American Spelling Book which call for com- 
ment are not numerous. Following his guiding principle of economy, 
Webster consistently omitted the final k in words like magic, tragic, 
havoc, etc., including hassoc, in which word the conventional spelling 
has restored the final k. He omitted the wu in favor, flavor, honor, 
savior, etc., but gives behaviour,? perhaps an oversight, since the form 
behavior is the only one recorded in his dictionary, both in the edition 
of 1806 and 1807. Other rationalized spellings are chesnut tree, p. 
111, turky, p. 238, enrol, p. 24, hoop, to cry out, p. 39, sley, p. 40, 
meter, miter, niter, etc., p. 46, opake, p. 52, rallery, p. 66, musketoe, 
p. 68, whurr, p. 102. In the spelling pannel, empannel, pp. 22, 28, 
the double consonant is retained to indicate the shortness of the 
accented vowel. But one is surprised to find waggoner, p. 27, and 
waggon persists even in the dictionary of 1807, though it is changed 
to wagon in the American Dictionary of 1828. One notes also phrenzy, 
p. 47, buccanier, cannonier, p. 97, though these last spellings are 
analogically justified by being grouped with brigadier, cavalier, finan- 
cier, and others in which the French orthography has persisted. A 
spelling teint, p. 36, pronounced tint, seems not to be intended for 
the common word, meaning ‘‘shade of color,” since it is recorded 
as a special form in the dictionary of 1807, where it is defined as 
‘“‘a touch of a pencil.’”’ On the whole one must admire the restraint 
which Webster exercised in making up his lists. He followed sim- 
plifying tendencies wherever he found sufficient authority for doing 
so, but indulged in few experimental innovations of his own. 

The popularity of the book was doubtless due in large measure 
to the fact that it presented an orderly, and as far as convention at 
all permitted, an economical and systematic guide to English spell- 


1From the preface of the revision made in 1803. 
2 Revision of 1803, edition of 1831, p. 91. 


AMERICAN SPELLING 339 


ing. It is historically significant therefore, not as a radical book, 
but because it became so widely used. In fact the American Spelling 
Book became so generally accepted as a standard that it made any 
thoroughgoing reform of spelling more than ever impossible. In 
a note to the Preface of the 1803 revision, dated March, 1818, Web- 
ster says that “‘the sales of the American Spelling Book, since its 
first publication, amount to more than five millions of copies, and 
they are annually increasing.” A few years later, the publishers 
stated that one million copies were sold annually. If we remember 
that in 1820 the state of Illinois numbered less than 100,000 inhab- 
itants, that the whole population of the state of New York was less 
than one-third of that of the present city of New York, that the 
whole of Massachusetts contained fewer inhabitants than Boston 
now does, we begin to realize the enormous consumption of these 
spelling books. Writing in 1837 and in answer to a letter of inquiry, 
Webster gave the number of copies sold to date as “‘at least fifteen 
millions.”” By 1865 the total circulation had been about 42,000,000 
copies. From 1876 to 1890, during which time the book was under 
the control of D. Appleton and Company, the sales were ‘‘about 
eleven and one-half million copies,” Ford, Notes, II, 448-449. ‘‘The 
present generation of living men and women,” says a writer in the 
year 1865, quoted in Ford, Notes II, 448, ‘‘when they go back in 
memory to their early school days find their thoughts resting upon 
this, as their only and all-important text-book.”’ The spelling match 
became indeed a great social and national pastime, rivaling in interest 
the singing school and horse racing in pioneer and village life. It 
is not too much to say that for the average American citizen, especially 
in the North and West, throughout at least three generations, Web- 
ster’s spelling book was almost the solitary means of approach to the 
elements of literary culture. Other spelling books appeared, some 
rivals, some imitations, but none ever approached the American 
Spelling Book in popularity. The term American in the title may 
have had something to do with this, but the Americanism of the 
author, as has been pointed out, affected his spelling very little. 
It appeared mainly in the introduction of some statistical and 


340 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


encyclopedic matter, and in the lists of names of towns, rivers, and 
mountains in America. In these latter Webster’s genius for spelling 
shows at its best. If one compares Webster’s simple and reasonable 
spellings with the cumbersome and multifarious proper names which 
give early books of American travel and description so odd an ap- 
pearance to modern eyes, one realizes the extent of his achievement 
in normalizing and simplifying the orthography of American place 
names. In almost all instances his spellings are those which have 
become familiar in present use. Where they differ it is usually in 
the names of places which at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
were but little more than names, for example, Illenois, Missore, 
Chickaugo, Chatanuga. 

Webster began his career as a maker of dictionaries with the 
publication of A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, 
published at New Haven, in 1806. This work, he declares, in words 
that have become familiar in the business of making dictionaries, 
contains five thousand words not ‘‘found in the Best English Com- 
pends.” It also contains certain encyclopedic matter, such as tables 
of money, weights and measures, measurements of time, a list of 
the post-offices in the United States, statistics of population, and 
chronological tables. The dictionary proper gives the spelling, pro- 
nunciation and definition of the words, but not their etymologies. 
This dictionary was intended to contain ‘‘a complete vocabulary of 
English words now in use, . . . for the daily use of adults.” In the 
year following, Webster published a briefer form of it, A Dictionary 
of the English Language compiled for the use of common schools in the 
Umited States, New Haven, 1807. This abridgment was designed to 
contain ‘‘all the words which common people have occasion to use,”’ 
and being cheap, Webster hopes it will be well received “‘by the 
great body of farmers and mechanics in the United States,’”’ Preface, 
p. iv. In the preface to this dictionary, Webster repudiates the 
authority of Johnson as a guide in spelling, as he had often done 
before, and in fact repudiates all literary authority, since ‘‘authorities 
equally respectable for different modes of spelling may be cited 
without end, leaving the inquirer unsatisfied, and the real truth 


AMERICAN SPELLING 341 


undiscovered.” ‘I have adopted,” he continues, ‘‘a different mode 
of deciding doubtful questions of this sort, and by tracing out the 
radical words and primitive spelling, have endeavored to ascertain 
the real orthography. By pursuing this principle, we arrive at a 
point which cannot be disputed, thus gradually settling controversies 
and purifying our language from many corruptions introduced by 
ignorance or negligence, during the confusion of languages under the 
first Norman prince. Without recurring to the originals, in 
the manner here stated, it is impossible, I apprehend, to adjust the 
orthography of many words in the language, or to purify it from 
numerous barbarisms,” p. v. It was a large and bold undertaking 
which Webster announces in these words, and we turn to the dic- 
tionary itself with some curiosity to see how much of the “‘real truth”’ 
thus defined Webster thought it proper to reveal to the common 
people, farmers and mechanics. 
The most significant of Webster’s spellings in this dictionary of 
1807 are simplifications arising either from the omission of silent 
letters or the application of the principle of analogy. The final syl- 
lable of words like honor, favor, savior, behavior is consistently spelled 
without wu. In final syllables k is also omitted in arrac, music, physic, 
burdoc, cassoc, hassoc, hommoc (hummock), logic, and so generally. 
But in this, as in many of his principles, Webster was not altogether 
consistent, for he spells almanack, traffick, trafficker. In monosyllabic 
words the combination ck is regularly retained, as in dock, sick, thick, 
te., though he permits a choice between zinc and zink, talc and 
talck. Final double consonants are simplified, as in bur, and in the 
final element of compounds and polysyllables, as in cat-cal, epaulet, 
eliquet, farewel, fore-tel, gavot, palet (for palette), skzlful, wind-fal, 
wool-fel, but often they are not, and besides these spellings one finds 
charr (the fish, but char, verb), tarif or tariff, and with considerable 
regularity double consonants in final stressed syllables, as in bru- 
nett, gazell (but gazette), giraff, and others. Webster also strove to 
omitffinal silent e when not needed to indicate the length of a pre- 
ceding, vowel, as\in™ "ax, ¥carmin,' * definit, disciplin, doctrin, examin, 
famin, granit, wmagin, bein nightmar, opposit, etc., though for 


342 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


some of these words he also records a form with e, and for some words 
which would seem to belong in this class, e.g., missile, missive, motive, 
he records only the forms with e. In mazz the final e is omitted on 
the assumption that the spelling az indicates a long vowel. Silent 
consonants are omitted in some words, either without remark or with 
express approval as useful reforms, e.g., altho (also tho), benum, 
chesnut, crum, diaphram, dipthong (diphthong is not recorded), ile 
(for aisle), ieland (for island), istmus (beside isthmus), num (for 
numb), sodder (for solder), thum (for thumb). Among the analogical 
simplifications are (1) a generalization of the use of k for that sound, 
as in ake, aker (or acre), checker (for chequer), grotesk, kalender, kaw 
(for caw), mosk (for mosque), musketoe, oblike, oker, opake, picturesk, 
skirrous, skreen (but inconsistently scate beside skate); (2) czon for 
scion, according to the rule that cis a continuant before eandz; (3) 00 
for long u, as in accooter, behoove (beside behove), choose (beside 
chuse), croop, groop, lagoon (or lagune), loom (or loam), oosel (or 
ousel), ragoo (for ragout), soop (but also recorded under soup), surtoot 
(or surtout), toor (or tour), troop; (4) e for the short vowel in words 
written ea, eo, as in bed-sted, bredth, fether, lether, lepard, sted, stelth, 
thred, trechorous, tred, welth, wether, yest (for yeast); (5) o for the long 
value of that vowel, as in cloke, coke (beside coak), jole (beside jowl), 
mold (for mould), molt, soe (for sew and sow), wo (or woe); (6) u for o 
when the latter was historically an orthographic substitution for the 
former, as in spunge, tun, tung (for tongue), tunnage; (7) o for to 
in fashon, parishoner, u for ui in juce, nusance, e for ez in plebean, 7 
for uz in guillotin; (8) derivatives formed on simple words without 
alteration, as in bell-foundery from founder, cloisteral from cloister, 
deanry from dean; (9) single letters for digraphs, as in asafetida, 
diarrhea, economy, ecumenical, fetus, maneuver, pean, phenix. Besides 
these there are some miscellaneous simplifications, as battoe for 
bateau, batteau, chapt for chapped, controller for comptroller, cookt for 
cooked, demain for demesne, epitomy for epitome, glast for glassed, 
hainous for heinous, leggin for legging, lettice for lettuce, liver for the 
French coin, melasses for molasses, pleet for plait, prairy, raindeer 
(reindeer rejected as ‘‘false spelling,” but rane also recorded), segar, 


AMERICAN SPELLING 343 


stlvan, sirup, skilful, sley (for sleigh), stiptic, stract (for straight), sub- 
stract (for subtract, on the ground that substract is etymologically more 
correct), taffety (beside taffeta), tailor (but taylor also recorded), ticken 
(for ticking), turky, vittle, vultur, wimmen (defended as the correct 
etymological spelling of women, from the Old English form wif-mon). 
On the whole, Webster’s improved spellings in the dictionary of 
1807 were unreasonable neither in number nor character, though 
many of them were records of Webster’s personal opinions rather than 
statements of established conventions. One may question the ad- 
visability of making an elementary dictionary, or in fact a dictionary 
of any kind, the exponent of theories of reform in spelling, but if 
this is done, the reforms ought to be carried through systematically 
and formally, not merely suggested here and there as preferences of 
the compilers. In this book Webster wrought mainly as an educator, 
not as an unbiassed recorder of words, and he seems to have intro- 
duced his reforms more or less casually with the intent of showing 
what he thought American spelling ought to be, not what it was. 
Twenty years later, Webster was ready to proceed with the pub- 
lication of his most important work, An American Dictionary of the 
English Language, published at New York in 1828, in two large 
quarto volumes. The book shows a considerable modification of 
Webster’s earlier views. He is still convinced that it is ‘‘not only 
important, but in a degree necessary, that the people of this country 
should have an American Dictionary of the English language,’’ but 
he no longer desires to emphasize the differences between American 
and British English. He now finds that the body of the language is 
the same in America as in England, and that it is “desirable to 
perpetuate that sameness.’ National pride and patriotism are no 
longer made the justification for his interest in American speech, 
but the simple necessity that ‘‘a number of words in our language 
require to be defined in a phraseology accommodated to the condition 
and institutions of the people in these states, and the people of 
England must look to an American Dictionary for a correct under- 
standing of such terms,’ American Dictionary (1828), Preface. 
Other considerations “‘of a public nature, which serve to justify the 


344 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


attempt to furnish an American Work which shall be a guide to the 
youth of the United States,’ Webster passes over with the discreet 
remark that they “‘are too obvious to require mention.” One point, 
however, he dwells upon, and that is the innovation he has started 
in citing Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jay and other American 
writers as authorities on the same page as Boyle, Hooker, Milton, 
Dryden and other British men of letters. Franklin and Washing- 
ton, Webster thinks, ‘‘ present as pure models of genuine English as 
Addison or Swift,’ and he mentions various others whose style is 
‘“fequaled only by that of the best British authors, and surpassed 
by that of no English compositions of similar kind.” But the 
Americanism reflected in the sentiment thus expressed is quite a 
different matter from the narrow patriotic zeal which was rampant 
in the years immediately following the Revolution. 

A similar modification of his earlier theories of reform is to be 
noted in the body of Webster’s American Dictionary. Many of the 
simplifications recorded in the earlier dictionaries and spelling books 
are not found at all in the quarto of 1828, or if mentioned, are given 
second place. Thus the quarto has only accowter, soup, etc., though 
occasional reforms are retained, as in the second spelling groop for 
group and croop for croup. Some other of the reformed spellings 
like lether, fether, etc., are retained as second choices, but the con- 
ventional spellings leather, feather, bedstead, meadow, spread, stealth, 
etc., are either the only ones recorded or are given first place. The 
double consonant of simple words is generally restored in compounds 
like bellwether, catcall, instead of earlier belwether, catcal. The final 
consonant of the first element of chestnuttree is restored, and final e 
in words like definite, doctrine, examine, famine, is generally recorded, 
though here, as frequently, Webster is far from being consistent. 
Other returns to conventional spelling are basin (not bason), boil (a 
tumor, in the dictionary of 1806 given as bile), dandruff, cutlas (not 
cutlash), lettuce (instead of lettice), parishioner (instead of parishoner), 
pomace (instead of pumice), taffeta (rejecting taffety), women 
(rejecting wimmen), and many others. Curiously enough the spell- 
ing wagon appears first in the dictionary of 1828, being spelled 


AMERICAN SPELLING 0 ga 


waggon in all Webster’s earlier books. Words of foreign origin are 
less drastically anglicized than they had been in the earlier diction- 
aries, for example in bateau, chamois (for which three spellings are 
given), guillotin, livre, and others. Conventional spellings like ache, 
acre, aisle are given the head positions, though frequently the re- 
formed spellings, such as ake, aker, aile, ile, are given under separate 
heading with expression of opinion in their favor. In general the 
three points of orthography on which Webster seems to have placed 
most stress were the omission of k in many words like music, public, 
etc., which were spelled ck in Johnson’s dictionary; of wu in end- 
syllables of words like error, honor, superior, etc.; and the writing of 
center, meter, scepter, sepulcher, etc., instead of centre, metre, sceptre, 
sepulchre, etc. With respect to the words of the second group, his 
procedure was regular, but in the first and third groups he permitted 
himself all sorts of inconsistencies, many of them inexcusable in a 
lexicographer who had set himself the task of reducing the spelling 
of the language to uniformity. An elaborate collection of instances 
of irregularity was made by Cobb, A Critical Review of the Orthog- 
raphy of Dr. Webster’s Series of Books for Systematick Instruction 
in the English Language, New York, 1831. 

On the other hand, Webster introduced some new reforms into 
the American Dictionary, though the principle upon which the 
reforms were based was generally etymology, not analogy or econ- 
omy. It is difficult to clear Webster of the charge of pedantry in 
his treatment of etymological spellings. He spells bridegoom for 
bridegroom, on the basis of the Anglo-Saxon original of the word and 
in defiance of centuries of good usage, because he thinks that ‘‘such 
a gross corruption or blunder ought not to remain a reproach to 
philology.”’ For similar reasons he changes build to bild, furlough 
to furlow, island to zeland (recorded also in the earlier dictionaries), 
nightmare to nightmar, parsnip, turnip, to parsnep, turnep (because 
of Anglo-Saxon nepe), ribbon, riband to ribin (on the ground that 
the word has no etymological connection with band), selvage to sel- 
vedge. Apparently none of Webster’s etymological reforms has 
passed into general use. 


346 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


The American Dictionary was not received with universal ap- 
proval. Many persons resented Webster’s tinkering the language, 
especially in the matter of spellings. He also introduced an element 
of confusion in estimating the value of his work by reason of the 
extraordinary inconsistency of the spellings he employed. He often 
failed to follow even his own simplest rules, not only in one pub- 
lication as compared with another, but even in the head-forms and 
definitions of the authoritative dictionary of 1828. For the apostle 
of regularity to violate regularity was a sin scarcely to be forgiven. 
Webster held on to some of his reformed spellings to the end, but the 
sequence of his publications shows a gradually diminishing endeavor 
to present a comprehensively American, as distinguished from Brit- 
ish system of spelling. Even his three cardinal reforms, as illustrated 
in music, honor and center, did not pass unquestioned, and his severer 
critics, as for example, Lyman Cobb, advocated a return to the 
Johnsonian spellings musick, honour and centre. Spelling books of 
the Johnsonian tradition, however, enjoyed only a moderate popu- 
larity. In the main the spellings advocated by Webster were fol- 
lowed by all other makers of spelling books in America, whose num- 
ber, after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was legion. 
But they differed from each other, so far as they did differ, not in 
exploitation of new spellings, but of new theories and methods of 
teaching the accepted spelling. Webster indeed complained more 
than once that the multiplying of authorities, that is, of text-books, 
was bringing confusion into American education. Doubtless it would 
have been pleasing to him if he could have maintained a monopoly 
in this profitable commodity of spelling books. But trade rivalries 
soon became very keen, and the resultant confusion was more a 
confusion of the market place than in spelling itself. 

It is scarcely necessary to follow Webster’s spelling book and 
his dictionary through their later and numerous modifications and 
revisions, after they passed from his personal control, but it may be 
pointed out that in general the changes were in the direction of 
gradually getting rid of Webster’s peculiarities of orthography, and 
of bringing American and British spelling into closer accord. In 


AMERICAN SPELLING 347 


this the publishers were unquestionably responding to a popular 
demand, and Webster’s project of a distinctive American spelling 
for the American people was doomed to failure because the people 
did not want such a spelling. It was one of Webster’s merits, how- 
ever, that both by his publications and by ceaseless lecturing, adver- 
tising and sometimes wire-pulling, he succeeded in arousing a great 
popular interest in spelling and in the language in America, an interest 
so great that dictionary making became a profitable publishers’ 
undertaking. The battle of the dictionaries which followed the pub- 
lication of Webster’s quarto of 1828 reflects therefore not only pop- 
ular interest, but also to a very considerable extent the commercial 
rivalries of opposing publishing houses. 

Of the later endeavors to reform English spelling in America, the 
most important has been that of the Simplified Spelling Board. 
This Board was organized January 12, 1906, and as it enjoyed the 
financial support of Andrew Carnegie, it was able to conduct a vig- 
orous campaign of publication. Its first publication was a list of 
common words now spelled in two or more ways, issued March 21, 
1906. Numerous other bulletins and documents were later sent 
forth, the aim of the Board not being to establish a thoroughgoing 
reform at once, but by a campaign of publicity to lead the public 
to accept reforms gradually. After a life of two decades, it cannot 
be said that the movement has brought success within sight. The 
program of education still continues with diminished ardor, and the 
public, as ever, remains reluctant. In its many publications, how- 
ever, the Board has collected a very considerable body of informa- 
tion and sensible suggestion on the whole matter of spelling reform 
which in time may bear fruit. Corresponding to the American 
Simplified Spelling Board is the British Simplified Spelling Society, 
organized later than the Board and much more radical in the reforms 
which it has recommended and which it has exemplified in its publi- 
cations. The most important of the publications of the Simplified 
Spelling Board is the Handbook of Simplified Spelling, issued in 
1920. 

The question of the present differences between standard British 


348 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


and standard American spelling is of so little linguistic importance 
that it scarcely calls for discussion. It is true that some Englishmen 
still seem to think that American spelling is grotesquely different 
from British spelling, though persons who cherish this opinion are 
likely also to think of Chicago as a suburb of Philadelphia, or of 
American Indians as still walking the streets of Kansas City. The 
notion is probably a survival from early nineteenth-century con- 
troversies in America over spelling, at which time some justification 
for it was given by Webster’s proposed new spellings. But these new 
spellings were theoretical reforms advocated by Webster, and the 
only ones which were general in actual practice in America, like the 
spellings music, center and honor, were such as found abundant 
authority in British usage and might have been general there as 
readily as they have become general in America. There are various 
reasons to account for the almost complete harmony between British 
and American spelling. In the first place, English spelling was 
pretty well fixed by the year 1600, and consequently the spelling 
which all emigrants to America brought with them was the one which 
custom had established in most instances for English spelling every- 
where. Then again Americans have always read British books with 
little or no sense that these books might be regarded as belonging to 
a speech different from their own. The forms of English spelling 
have been uninterruptedly familiar—and very rarely hateful—to 
Americans, so much so that nowadays American publishers, with 
the publisher’s keen professional sense of what offends, often choose 
to offend the least easily offended by employing in books meant to 
circulate in England as well as America the three or four spellings 
which are sacred in British use. To the American these spellings 
are in the main matters of indifference, and during the food con- 
servation efforts of the Great War, almost every American household 
displayed a placard stating that ‘‘in honour bound” the members 
of the household would do all they could to save food. Among 
other examples of British spelling cited by Professor Brander Mat- 
thews, ‘‘As to American Spelling,’ in Parts of Speech, p. 298, where 
some of the emotional aspects of the attitude of the British towards 


AMERICAN SPELLING 349 


their spelling are entertainingly set forth, are almanack with a k, 
waggon with two q’s, traveller with two l’s, defence for defense, and 
so with some similar words, and theatre, centre, etc., for theater, cen- 
ter, etc. The British objection to American spelling, as thus sum- 
marized, Professor Matthews declares to have been fully and fairly 
stated as it was deduced ‘‘from a painful perusal of many columns of 
exacerbated British writing.” By search one might perhaps add 
some further words to this list, for example, tyre for tire, storey, 
storeys, of a house, shew for show, kerb for curb. Yet the most ex- 
haustive search and the inclusion of words which might occur even 
only rarely in British spelling, as chymist for chemist, chace for chase, 
cyder for cider, could not bring together more than a trifling number 
of words as compared with the whole body of spellings common to 
British and American English. In the main the so-called British 
spellings are survivals from older spellings which have been leveled 
out in American spelling, either through analogy or in the quest for 
economy and simplicity of spelling. Yet it would be a mistake 
to suppose that all Englishmen thought as one about their archaic 
spellings. The style book of the Oxford University Press, known 
as Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary, originally compiled by F. 
Howard Collins and revised by Horace Hart, prefers story to storey, 
and declares that though tyre is usual, tire is correct. It spells 
almanac without k, except in a few archaic and traditional titles. 
It does, however, insist on centre, theatre, etc., on defence, offence, 
etc., on honour, though it says nothing about errour, favour, and 
candour, and many similar words, which apparently may be spelled 
error, favor, candor, and it specifically rejects tenour for tenor; it 
definitely retains colour as a military term and in coloured, colourist, 
but nothing is said about the noun, which apparently may be spelled 
colour or color, as it is given in the New English Dictionary. The 
spelling skow is prescribed for most uses, but shew is to be used in 
Scotch law and in citations from the Bible and the Prayer Book. 
When one begins to examine the details of British spelling in this 
way it soon becomes apparent that it is a wise and rare Britisher 
who knows what British spelling is. One needs at hand a printed 


350 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


style book to enable one always to make sure that one is following 
the orthodox faith. In the style book of the Oxford Press men- 
tioned above, in the first few pages under the letter a, we learn that 
advertise and affranchise must be spelled with s, not 2, but anglicize, 
appetize and many others, must be spelled with z, while apprise, 
“‘to inform,” must have s, and apprize, “‘to value,’’ must have z. 
Only one whose business it is to remember technical details would 
think of burdening his mind with minutiz of this sort, and certainly 
when the Britisher’s heart glows with pride and patriotism as he 
rises to the defense, or defence, of the beloved institution of British 
spelling, it cannot be with such matters that his mind is filled. It 
is filled merely with those half dozen words like honour, centre, de- 
fence, waggon, traveller, which indeed serve sufficiently as rocks upon 
which to found his faith. To attack this faith would perhaps be 
both inexpedient and futile. Since spelling is merely a conventional 
system of symbolic representation of speech, it would seem that the 
wisest thing to do would be to permit in spelling as wide a choice 
as civilized persons usually permit in other conventions. If not 
maintained by extraneous enthusiasm and prejudices, the less worthy 
conventions will the more readily pass away, leaving behind no 
occasion for difference either of opinion or of practice. 


’ 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 


No account of the English language in America would be com- 
plete without some notice of the American dictionary. Unlike the 
sewing-machine, the dictionary was not an American invention. 
But if America cannot claim the dictionary by the right of discoy- 
ery, she may be said to have made at least the popular English dic- 
tionary peculiarly her own by right of use and occupation. Since 
the day of Dr. Johnson there has been no lack of English diction- 
aries, either in England or America, but in America the special 
conditions of an unlettered immigrant population and the elaborate 
development of general elementary education, both offering oppor- 
tunities for the exercise of commercial pushfulness, have given to the 
annals of popular dictionary making peculiar animation and vari- 
ety. It is in the tradition of American life that a household cannot 
be regarded as adequately equipped for the business of the day 
without a Webster’s Unabridged. The American child passed by 
natural progression from the spelling book to the dictionary, but the 
dictionary one never outgrew. As the newer dictionaries have 
become more elaborate than their predecessors, and as all of them 
took on more and more the character of cyclopedias of information, 
they have acquired reverence as indispensable sources of information 
concerning all those things about which the average citizen feels 
that he should know. | 

But if Noah Webster did not invent the dictionary, neither did 
Dr. Johnson. Johnson’s dictionary appeared in 1755, in two large 
folio volumes. Various partial and specialized dictionaries had 
appeared earlier, though none that approached Johnson’s monumental 
work in size and in scholarship. Obviously, however, the original 
edition of Johnson’s dictionary, both because of its cost and its un- 


wieldiness, was not a book for popular circulation. It soon passed 
351 


352 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


into modified and abbreviated editions, and these were the forms 
of it most commonly known. ‘The first complete American edition 
of Johnson, from the eleventh London edition, was published in two 
volumes at Philadelphia in 1818. To this was added Walker’s 
Principles of English Pronunciation, as was commonly done in 
American editions of Johnson after Walker’s dictionary had ap- 
peared. Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, in miniature, 
3d American edition, Boston, 1810, is typical of abbreviated forms 
of Johnson. It contained 276 pages, about six inches tall. Other 
hands, more or less pious, were laid upon Johnson’s work from time 
to time, and later editions frequently announced themselves as 
Johnson’s English Dictionary, as improved by Todd and abridged 
by Chalmers, with Walker’s pronouncing dictionary combined. 
Todd’s edition of Johnson appeared in 1818, but even after the pub- 
lication of Webster’s American Dictionary in 1828, the combination 
of Johnson, Todd, Chalmers and Walker was held in respect and 
esteemed invincible. 

A smaller dictionary extensively used in America in the eighteenth 
century was Entick’s Spelling Dictionary, first published at London 
in 1764. This was revised in 1787 by William Crakelt, who added 
a “catalogue of words of similar Sounds, but of different Spelling 
and Significations,”’ and lists of this kind are commonly found in 
later popular dictionaries. The dictionary itself gives the accents 
of words but does not indicate the quality of the sounds. Dr. John- 
son had done no more than this, and the chief advance in the making 
of dictionaries in the second half of the eighteenth century by Perry, 
Sheridan, Walker and others, lay in the direction of orthoepy. 
Entick’s dictionary was partly cyclopedical, containing besides a 
grammatical introduction, a list of proper names of men and women, 
‘fa List of all the Cities, Boroughs, Market-Towns, and Remarkable 
Villages in England and Wales,” and a “‘Succinct account of the 
Heathen Gods and Goddesses, Heroes and Heroines, etc., deduced 
from the best authorities.”” Comparison of some of Webster’s early 
publications with Entick shows that he learned a good deal, especially 
in method and arrangement, from Entick’s dictionary. 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 303 


In the last three decades of the eighteenth century, the English 
dictionary gained new life and interest through the attempt to record 
the living and audible forms of the English language more exactly 
than was possible in the conventional historical spelling. Hitherto 
dictionaries had not attempted to do more than indicate the accents 
of words and their division into syllables. The list of pronouncing 
dictionaries of the English language begins with Kenrick’s New 
Dictionary, 1773, which was not unknown in America, but not nearly 
so generally used as several others. More popular was William 
Perry’s Royal Standard English Dictionary, first published at London, 
in 1775. This had been preceded by Perry’s Only Sure Guide to the 
English Tongue, which, in spite of its expansive title, is only a simple 
pronouncing spelling book. The Only Sure Guide was republished 
in America by Isaiah Thomas, at Worcester, Massachusetts, who 
comments with pride, in the advertisement to his fourth edition, on 
the fact that he ‘‘ was the first person who ventured to print this work 
in America.”’ This fourth edition had been revised by comparison 
with Perry’s Royal Standard English Dictionary, which in the mean- 
time Thomas, noticing its scarcity in America, had also published. 
This first American Worcester edition of Perry appeared January 
1, 1788, ‘‘Being the First Work of the kind printed in America.” 
The vaunt was justifiable, for no dictionary had been printed before 
in America. It was dedicated to the American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences by the publisher. Besides the traditional material of 
dictionaries, it contained a system of pronunciation, ‘‘intelligible to 
the weakest capacity,” a grammar of English, Scripture proper names 
in the Old and New Testament with their pronunciations, names of 
the principal cities, rivers, mountains, etc., in the known world, also 
the names of ‘‘the ancient and modern poets, philosophers and 
statesmen,” with their pronunciations. Yet withal the book is not 
very large, containing 596 pages of thirty-eight lines to the page, 
the words being arranged in double columns. The number of words 
defined and pronounced is something over thirty thousand. 

After Perry’s Royal Standard English Dictionary the next impor- 
tant dictionary was Sheridan’s General Dictionary of the English 


354 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Language, published in two volumes in 1780. Sheridan’s dictionary 
was the first pronouncing dictionary to acquire what, for lack of a 
better term, may be described as social distinction. None of the 
pronouncing dictionaries of the eighteenth century approached the 
subject of pronunciation in the spirit merely of the impartial scien- 
tific observer and recorder. They were all the exponents of systems 
of pronunciation. One formed one’s pronunciation on Sheridan or 
Walker or Perry, or whatever sure guide one felt inclined to follow. 
But neither among professional writers on the subject nor among 
the conscientious lay speakers of the language was there any inclina- 
tion merely to follow nature. This attitude of mind persisted late, 
as is shown in the controversies which arose in America over the 
relative merits of Webster and Worcester, nor has it altogether died 
out to-day. Many persons still think that pronunciation is a kind 
of fine art, like playing the piano, which one acquires at its best only 
by following an authorized disciplinary method, by acquiring a sys- 
tem. Persons who would scorn to regulate their other social acts 
by the prescriptions of books of conduct, will yet regulate the social 
activity of speech by the rules of the dictionary. Unwilling to make 
decisions for themselves and perhaps perplexed by the very great 
variety in practice which they observe in actual speech, they simplify 
the situation by accepting as final the statements of some dictionary 
maker who has confidence enough to set himself up as an authority. 
Such an authority was Sheridan, although his rule was by no means 
undisputed. Webster was particularly violent and insistent in his 
denunciation of Sheridan, who had brought into his authoritative 
description of the English language, Webster thought, many of the 
corruptions of the stage and court as these corruptions flourished 
in Great Britain. As a matter of fact it was no part of Sheridan’s 
intention to present an extreme form of the English language, whether 
the speech of a small and fashionable class of courtiers or the public 
and professional speech of actors. Sheridan doubtless thought he 
was describing the English language as it had become established 
in certain forms of general social custom of which he approved, and 
no doubt in the main he did so. It has always been the fashion with 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 355 


critics of speech to reject that of which they do not approve or with 
which they are unfamiliar as the speech of corrupt society, either at 
its highest or its lowest level. In Sheridan three pronunciations 
especially were made the objects of criticism. One was the treatment 
of the ending -czation as a dissyllable instead of a trisyllable, enun- 
ciation being pronounced enunshashun; the second was the treat- 
ment of tu in stressed syllables in the same way as in unstressed syl- 
lables, tutor being pronounced with [t§] as in nature; the third was 
the failure to recognize any sound like “the Italian a” in English. 
Sheridan thus acquired the reputation of not being altogether a safe 
authority in pronunciation, and as safety in so delicate a matter as 
the guidance of speech is a first requisite, he failed to gain a wide or 
lasting popularity. In America Sheridan was little used, and in 
England also he was soon replaced by Walker, his immediate and 
more popular successor. Timothy Dwight reflected the common 
opinion of the eighteenth century that dictionaries made usage, and 
also the very general distrust of Sheridan, when he declared, T'ravels, 
I, 468, that the pronunciation of tu as |t\] was “foisted upon the 
language by Sheridan.” 

A version of Sheridan somewhat widely used was that by Stephen 
Jones, A General Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the 
English Language for the use of Schools, Foreigners learning English, 
etc. In which it has been attempted to improve on the plan of Mr. 
Sheridan. The edition from which this title was taken is the First 
Philadelphia Edition, Philadelphia, 1806. This was a reprint of the 
fifth British edition, the first having appeared in 1798. The im- 
provement attempted in this dictionary consists mainly in replacing 
certain pronunciations of Sheridan’s by those of Walker, though 
“the Italian a,” perhaps through the influence of Perry, is more 
extensively employed by Jones than by Walker. So far as the Phila- 
delphia edition is concerned, there is nothing whatever American 
about the book, except perhaps the easy manner in which an 
American publisher appropriated the property of a British author. 

Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the 
English Language appeared in a single volume in 1791. It contained 


356 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


prefixed an essay on the Principles of English Pronunciation, by far 
the most elaborate and discriminating discussion of pronunciation 
that had so far appeared in an English dictionary. The success of 
Walker’s book was immediate and wide and lasting. For two gen- 
erations it was the leading authority on pronunciation and it was 
edited and published in countless forms and adaptations. Older 
dictionaries incorporated as much of Walker as they could, and 
Johnson for spelling and Walker for pronunciation was a combination 
frequently made. The first American edition of Walker appeared 
in 1803, and there were numerous later editions, abridgments and 
partial appropriations. It became a common article of trade. 
‘Novels and useful histories,’’ remarked a competent observer in the 
Gentleman’s Mogazine, XLVI, 914, November, 1796, ‘‘are the best 
articles to be considered here [in the South in America] after Dic- 
tionaries.”” The popular success of Walker probably stimulated the 
production of American dictionaries when they began to appear at 
the beginning of the new century. Pickering, A Vocabulary (1816), 
p. 42, notes with satisfaction that ‘‘there is a general and increasing 
disposition to regulate our pronunciation by that of Walker.” The 
earliest American dictionaries, however, were small books, published 
to sell for a low price and to be used in schools. The beginnings of 
American lexicography are therefore rather humble, reflecting the 
needs and conditions of popular education, not the high life of Sheri- 
dan and Walker. 

The first English dictionary made and published in America was 
the work of Samuel Johnson, Jr., son of Samuel Johnson, first presi- 
dent of King’s College, the present Columbia University. Johnson 
was a native of Guilford, Connecticut, where he was born on March 
10, 1757, and where he died August 20, 1836. His dictionary was a 
very modest affair of 198 pages, containing in all something less than 
five thousand words. The title page is without date, but 1798 was 
doubtless the year of publication. Of this book only two copies 
are known to be in existence, one in the Yale University Library, 
imperfect, and one in the British Museum, and doubtless the original 
edition, which was not followed by a second, was small. The book 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 357 


was intended to be used as a schoolbook, and its title reads: ‘A 
School Dictionary, being a compendium of the latest and most im- 
proved dictionaries, and comprising an easy and concise method of 
teaching children the true meaning and pronunciation of the most 
useful words in the English language, and in which the parts of 
speech are distinguished and explained and a special rule is given for 
spelling derivatives and compound words. By Samuel Johnson, 
Jun’r. Published according to Act of Congress, New Haven. 
Printed and sold by Edward O’Brien, who holds the copyright for 
the States of Connecticut and New York.”’ The author was a school- 
master and says in his Preface that he undertook to prepare his dic- 
tionary because he had often felt the want of a “‘sizeable School 
dictionary.”” He does not pretend that there is anything original 
in his work but characterizes it as a ‘‘collection from previous authors 
of established reputation.”’ Who these authors were Johnson does 
not say, but one may surmise that they were mainly Dr. Johnson and 
Perry. As the dictionary was intended to supplement the common 
school books, that is the spellers, it omitted many familiar words, 
and thus took on somewhat the character of a dictionary of hard 
words. Pronunciations are indicated very crudely by diacritical 
marks, and the author confesses that “‘the differences of the sounds 
of the vowels are not so accurately pointed out in the following 
work as they are in the Grammatical Institute by the ingenious 
Webster.”’ As the supply of marks ran out in the printing of the 
book at enhance, the author explains at this point that ‘‘the want 
of a supply of accented types obliges the printer to omit the accents 
in such words as are easily pronounced by the division only.” 

Two years after the publication of this first dictionary appeared 
A Selected pronouncing and accented Dictionary, Suffield [Conn.], 
1800, by John Elliott and Samuel Johnson, Jr. Elliott was pastor of 
the church in East Guilford. Two editions of this work, with slight 
variations, appeared in 1800, see Steger, p. 23. In the Preface, the 
authors object to the extant dictionaries, both because of their size 
and cost, and also ‘‘from their want of delicacy and chastity of 
language. Many words, there found, are highly offensive to the 


358 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


modest ear, and cannot be read without a blush, and delicacy is one 
of the principal objects of early instruction: and this object is 
totally defeated by the indiscriminate use of vulgar and indecent 
words.” In the division of syllables and pronunciation of words, 
the standard avowed by the authors was “the practice of men of 
letters, and Gentlemen of the first abilities, and experience, in school 
education in modern times.’”’ As in Johnson’s first dictionary, pro- 
nunciations are indicated by diacritical marks, but occasionally a 
word is spelled in brackets as it should be pronounced, as sugar 
[shugar], chamois |shammy]. The authors give a list of words spelled 
differently but pronounced alike, and also a list of vulgar errors, p. 
30-31, in pronunciation. 

In the same year appeared Caleb Alexander’s Columbian Dic- 
tionary of the English Language, Boston, 1800. This was the first 
dictionary to boast of its Americanism. On the title page, Alexander 
declares that his book contains ‘‘many new words of general use, 
not found in any other English dictionary.’”’ Detailed examination 
of the book, which is only a small volume of about five hundred and 
fifty pages, does not bear out this statement. Practically all the 
words are in Perry and Walker, even picturesque words like widow- 
hunter, one who hunts up widows with jointures, sneak-wp, one who 
creeps up, etc. But telegraph is in Alexander, though not in Perry 
or Walker, and ducape, a kind of silk, is in Perry and Alexander, 
but not in Walker. On the whole, Alexander seems to stand some- 
what closer to Perry than to Walker. Only a very few distinctively 
American words are given, e.g., dime, ten cents; dollar, one hun- 
dred cents; Yanky, a New Englander. Alexander gives freshet in 
the American sense of a sudden rise of water due to rainfall, and also 
a fresh-water pool, as Perry and Walker do. But it is difficult to see 
the grounds of criticism in the Portfolio, I, 247, 325 (1801), on Alex- 
ander’s ‘“‘wigwam words,” for there are none such in the dictionary, 
not even the word wigwam. Most is made over the word coquette, 
with the second syllable pronounced [-kwet]. It was enough, how- 
ever, to arouse violent opposition at this time if one merely an- 
nounced one’s intention of making a dictionary specially for America 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 359 


and for Americans, for the animosities which center about innovations 
in language are likely to be stronger than the facts themselves 
warrant. 

In the matter of pronunciation, also, Alexander announced 
himself as bringing a special message to Americans. ‘‘Could any 
means be used, or any plan devised, to alter and unite Americans,” 
so he writes in his Advertisement, ‘‘in giving similar sounds to all 
the vowels and consonants, and their various combinations, the 
event would be happy.” But Alexander, reflecting on the differ- 
ences in opinion between Sheridan and Walker, was not very hopeful 
of attaining this desired end. ‘‘In spite of the most learned disser- 
tations, and the best rules, some would pronounce tdne, others 
tshéne, some tuesday, others tshdsday; some vél’-um, others vél’-yum; 
some pic’-ture, others pic’-tshur; some vén’-due, and others wén’due; 
and each would have his admirers and followers. . . . Not despair- 
ing, however, of doing a litile to fix a uniform and permanent standard 
of pronunciation, no pains have been spared in dividing and ac- 
centing the words according to the practice of the most approved 
and polite speakers.”’ This was no more than any other dictionary 
maker would have attempted to do. Alexander seems to have felt 
some feeble desire to record speech as he heard it. He was a patriotic 
son of New England, satisfied with his native land, but his dictionary 
was too traditional and imitative to acquire significance as an his- 
torically important document. 

Webster began his career as a dictionary maker with the publi- 
cation of his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, Hart- 
ford and New Haven, 1806. The book has a long descriptive title 
which sounds several familiar notes. Five thousand words are said 
to be added ‘‘to the best English compends,” the orthography is, 
‘‘In some instances,” corrected, the pronunciation marked by an 
accent or other suitable direction, and the definitions of many words 
amended and improved. In actual fact the book is a rather slight 
work of about four hundred pages, with few departures from earlier 
works of similar character. In the preface, however, Webster pre- 
sented several ideas which were more fully realized in his later 


360 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


dictionaries. He advocated a greater attention to the history of the 
language as providing safer authorities than modern writers, a method 
of deciding questions of present use by the appeal to historical use 
which might be carried very far. He also advocated reforms in 
spelling, and asserted with respect to pronunciation, p. xi, ‘‘that a 
living language admits of no fixed state, nor of any certain standard 
of pronunciation by which even the learned in general will consent 
to be governed.”’ He thinks that from the nature of the human mind, 
pronunciation is mutable, and he shows how different authorities 
speak differently on the same point. He also defends the importance 
of etymology in dictionary making, and has a good deal to say about 
new words. ‘‘Some words are either new in the United States,” 
he observes, p. xxii, ‘“‘or what is more usual, English words have 
received a new sense. Words of these kinds, when in general use 
in a state or number of states, or sanctioned by public authority in 
laws and judicial proceedings, are admitted into this work. When 
the use is local, that circumstance is noted [but the number of words 
thus marked local is very small]. Thus the system of taxation in 
Connecticut has converted fourfold into a verb, as have the laws of 
New York and Pennsylvania, the word docket, and the practice of 
courts in many states, the word default. The system of ecclesiastical 
polity in some states, has given a new meaning to association and 
consociation—the course of commercial transactions and the system 
of finance have originated new terms, as dutiable, customable, zrre- 
deemable. The farmer girdles his trees, the planter gins his cotton, 
or stocks up the rottoons of his sugar cane; although the language of 
England furnishes him with no words with meanings suited to his 
ideas. The merchant imports romals, humhums, baftas, and gurrahs; 
new species of cloths in this country; some perhaps destined to be 
of durable use, with their foreign names; others, with their names, 
to slide into disuse and oblivion. Lots and locations of lands, with 
located and unlocated rights, form, in this country, a new language, to 
which the British people are strangers.’”’ Webster then speaks of 
inventions and new discoveries, and adds that ‘‘in each of the coun- 
tries peopled by Englishmen, a distinct dialect of the language will 


AMERICAN“ DICTIONARIES 361 


gradually be formed; the principal of which will be that of the 
United States.”” In fifty years from this time, the American branch 
of English “will be spoken by more people than all the other dialects 
of the language, and in one hundred and thirty years, by more people 
than any other language on the globe, not excepting the Chinese.” 
He thinks the various dialects of English will remain mutually 
intelligible because of printing, but that the differentiation will be 
ereat. 

On the whole, this first dictionary of Webster’s is interesting more 
as showing the directions to which his mind was turning than as 
realizing in the treatment of detail any new ideas. In the year 
following, Webster published a condensation of his Compendious 
Dictionary, entitled Dictionary for Schools, New Haven, 1807. The 
dictionary of 1806 he declares to be too expensive for common schools, 
and he believes that ‘‘an abridgment of that work, containing all the 
words which common people have occasion to use, and sold at a less 
price, will be received by the great body of farmers and mechanics in 
the United States.”” The Dictionary for Schools contains 306 pages, 
and the Compendious Dictionary slightly over 400 pages, and the 
page of the Compendious Dictionary is also five lines longer than that 
of the Dictionary for Schools. At the conclusion of the Dictionary 
for Schools, Webster gives a three-page chronological Table of Re- 
markable Events, and this is the only encyclopedic matter included 
in the book. In the Compendious Dictionary he had given, ‘‘for the 
benefit of the Merchant, the Student and Traveller,” tables of moneys, 
weights and measures, the divisions of time among the Jews, Greeks 
and Romans, an official list of the post-offices of the United States, 
the number of the inhabitants in the United States, and finally, 
‘New and interesting Chronological Tables.” In the preface to his 
Dictionary for Schools, Webster notes, p. iii, improvement in edu- 
cation in the United States, ‘particularly in common schools, in 
which are taught the branches of learning necessary for the yeo- 
manry of the country.’”’ The British pocket dictionaries being all 
imperfect, Webster felt impelled to supply his countrymen with a 
proper book. ‘“‘Some of them [the British dictionaries] contain 


362 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


obscene and vulgar terms, improper to be repeated before children; 
others abound with obsolete words, or terms of art, which are of 
no use to common people; some of them are extremely faulty in the 
manner of marking the accent, making no distinction whatever 
between the long and short vowels; all of them contain some words 
not used in this country, or not in the same sense as in Great Britain; 
and what is very important, all of them are deficient in a multitude 
of words which are sanctioned by the best usage.”” He repeats here 
also the opinion previously expressed in his Dissertations, ‘‘that two 
nations, proceeding from the same ancestors, but established in dis- 
tant countries, cannot long preserve a perfect sameness of language.” 
He grants that the language of the United States is English, but 
already feels strongly the need of a dictionary of the American 
language. 

Webster’s interest in the making of dictionaries grew as he 
acquired greater leisure for carrying on such pursuits. He began, 
as has just been pointed out, with the compilation of cheap elementary 
dictionaries, and with the income derived from the sale of these, but 
more especially from the sale of his American Spelling Book, he felt 
himself to be set free to proceed to more ambitious undertakings. 
The chief labor of his life, An American Dictionary of the English 
Language, in two quarto volumes, was published at New York, in 
1828. Three years intervened between the time of completion of 
the copy of the book and the date of publication. ‘‘When I finished 
my copy,” so Webster wrote in words that recall the earlier words of 
Gibbon, ‘‘I was sitting at my table in Cambridge, England, January, 
1825. When I arrived at the last word I was seized with a tremor 
that made it difficult to proceed. I, however, summoned up strength 
to finish the work, and then, walking about the room, I soon recov- 
ered.”’! 

Despite its historical importance as the most significant contri- 
bution to the growth of English lexicography between Dr. Johnson 
and the appearance of the first volume of the New English Diction- 
ary, Webster’s American Dictionary can be said to have been only 


1 Steger, p. 39. 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 363 


partially successful. The book was broadly conceived, but in parts 
executed with an inadequate scholarship and with a stubbornness of 
personal conviction that seriously impaired the noble design. In the 
form which Webster gave it, it has not become an American classic, 
and if it were not for elaborate publishers’ revisions of Webster’s 
work, revisions with which he had nothing to do but which never- 
theless did retain what was genuinely good in the dictionary of 1828, 
Webster’s name would probably now be unknown in the land. 
Webster considered that in the composition of his dictionary he 
was making contributions of importance to English lexicography 
especially in etymology, orthography, pronunciation, definition of 
words, and what for lack of a better name may be called American- 
ization. Each of these aspects of his book calls for a word of comment. 
In etymology Webster was least successful and most ambitious. 
He rightly analyzed the situation as he observed it in his day and 
found that all preceding dictionaries were altogether inadequate on 
the side of etymology. This inadequacy he attempted to supply, 
and as a preliminary, he developed a complete explanation of the 
origin and relationships of languages. He spent ten years in the 
comparison of ‘“‘radical words” and in forming ‘“‘a synopsis of the 
principal words in twenty languages, arranged in classes, under their 
primary elements or letters.’’ From these studies Webster thought 
that he had derived the “‘genuine principles” on which languages are 
constructed. The value of these principles may be inferred when 
one observes that on Scriptural evidence Webster accepts the notion 
of a single, unified language as the primitive language of mankind, 
the notion that ‘‘before the dispersion, the whole earth was of one 
language and of one or the same speech.”’ This primitive language 
he takes to have been Chaldee, and much of his etymologizing con- 
sists in showing the supposed relations which exist between later 
languages and original parent Chaldee. Sir James Murray, Evolu- 
tion of English Lexicography, p. 43, is therefore unjust to Webster 
when he says that Webster ‘‘had the notion that derivations can be 
elaborated from one’s own consciousness.”’ Webster did not derive 
his etymologies from his inner consciousness, but from Chaldee. 


364 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Nor did he make these derivations without employing a certain 
amount of scholarly machinery and critical method. But his critical 
method was crude and unsound. His endeavor was to discover 
what he considered to be ‘‘radical words,” the primitive units from 
which all languages were derived. To do this he made lists of words 
in various languages which had somewhat similar meanings and 
which looked alike in their consonant framework. Thus the name 
of ‘‘the Russ or Russians is clearly recognized in the Roxolani of Pliny 
and Ptolemy’’; that the Teutonic races formerly dwelt in the East 
is proved by an assumption of identity in English crag and the proper 
name Cragus in Pliny, of Perga in Pamphylia and Teutonic burg or 
bergen; in Thymbreck, the name of a small stream near the site of 
Troy, ‘‘we recognize the English brook.” In establishing these 
identities Webster paid little attention to vowels, the changes in 
vowels being so common and so meaningless that ‘‘little or no regard 
is to be had to them, in ascertaining the origin and affinity of lan- 
guages.’ With unfortunate complacency, Webster criticizes ad- 
versely the opinions of Sir William Jones on this point, remarking 
that “it is obvious that Sir William Jones had given very little at- 
tention to the subject.’’ Even in his treatment of consonants, how- 
ever, Webster had worked out no systematic principles of identities 
and correspondences. He does recognize that certain consonants 
have undergone changes which may be reduced to regular or general 
statement, for example, the vocalization of an earlier g in English 
bow, buy, lay, say, fair, flail, etc. But ordinarily Webster is content 
to assume a radical identity between two words if they exhibit only 
a moderate degree of similarity in their consonantal structure. Thus 
‘“‘the Saxon carc, ‘care,’ cercian, ‘to care,’ ‘to cark,’ is connected in 
origin with the Latin carcer, ‘a prison,’ both from the sense of strain- 
ing, whence holding or restraint.’’ Disregarding the very dubious 
Anglo-Saxon scholarship here exhibited, and recalling the relation of 
cark as an etymological doublet of charge, of which Webster knew 
nothing, one notes that Webster had no clear notion of the relation 
between cark and carcer beyond that suggested by the fact that the 
two words sounded alike and could be made to mean something 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 365 


alike. ‘‘No part of my researches,” says Webster, “‘has given me 


more trouble or solicitude than that of arriving at the precise radical 
significance of moral ideas; such, for example, as hope, love, favor, 
faith.” In short it was really spiritual, not phonological truth in 
which Webster was primarily interested, and he seems to have 
thought, as Plato makes Socrates think in the Cratylus that the 
truth of a word, that is the primitive and original radical value of the 
word, was equivalent to the truth of the idea. ‘This is, to be sure, 
the literal and original meaning of the word etymology, but not at all 
the sense which attaches to that word in the science of linguistics. 
Writing, or at least publishing, in the second quarter of the nineteenth 
century, Webster can scarcely be excused for not knowing that 
Grimm’s Deutsche Grammatik was in existence, that the comparative 
relations of words in languages of the same group are to be determined 
by the tests of regular phonetic rules or laws, not by casual external 
similarities or by subtle spiritual interpretations. Webster’s work 
in etymology illustrates the extreme isolation and provincialism of 
American scholarship in the early years of the nineteenth century. 
This condition, however, was soon to change, and before the close 
of the second quarter of the century, pilgrims to Germany had 
brought to America a realization of a new content and method in 
scholarship which at once made Webster’s efforts seem futile and 
antiquated. But Webster was not one of these pilgrims. He ap- 
parently never realized that his dictionary was not altogether ade- 
quate. It was unfortunate for Webster’s fame that his book had 
scarcely appeared before it was necessary to disburden it of its errors 
in order that its better parts could be properly utilized. These ety- 
mological crudities were retained in all editions of Webster until the 
edition of 1864, the first to be designated as Unabridged. In this 
edition the department of etymology was put under the direction of 
C. A. F. Mahn, a German scholar of ability, and the edition is fre- 
quently referred to as the Webster-Mahn. 

In orthography Webster regarded himself as not merely a recorder 
but also as a reformer. His fundamental ideas were the same as 
those which had previously appeared in his spelling books and earlier 


366 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


dictionaries. They were based upon notions of economy, of the 
value of regularity to be secured by following analogy, and in some 
instances, of faithfulness to earlier obscured forms of words. The 
omission of u in honor, neighbor, etc., and of final k in music, public, 
etc., are examples of spellings favored for reasons of economy. The 
preference of meter, specter, etc., to metre, spectre, etc., of mold, molt 
to mould, moult, thred to thread, of lether to leather, was defended by 
Webster on the ground that the preferred spellings followed the more 
common, therefore the more natural analogy. Webster did not 
often modify spellings to bring words into harmony with their ety- 
mological originals, but some of his most impracticable spellings 
are of this kind. Thus bridegroom he would spell bridegoom, because 
the second element of the word is derived from Old English guma. 
The singular woman Webster took to be derived from womb and 
man, therefore with some propriety spelled woman. But the plural 
as written looks as though it were womb and men. ‘The true source 
of the plural Webster takes to be Old English wzfmen, and this plural 
he would write as pronounced, wzmen. » It should be remarked, how- 
ever, that Webster advocates the spelling wimen only as the counsel 
of perfection, and that he records women as the conventional form. 
Disregarding these comparatively few fantastic etymological spell- 
ings, one finds that Webster’s spellings on the whole were sensible 
and reasonable. Many of them have passed into unquestioned 
American use, and many others have failed to do so not from any 
theoretical defect in the spellings, but because language is only in 
part under the control of judgment and reason. 

The treatment of pronunciation in the American Dictionary shows 
no advance over Webster’s treatment of this subject in his earlier 
dictionaries and in his spelling books. Many distinctive and some 
provincial New England pronunciations are retained, as [a:] in ask, 
past, dance, etc., [ur] in tube, duke, etc., deaf with the vowel of leaf; 
words with aw as in saunter, taunt, etc., are given with [a1]; but 
sauce, contrary to Webster’s earlier opinion, has [o:]. In some 
instances, Webster recognized popular pronunciations, as when he 
gave shamois, shammy, chamois, with no indication of preference for 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 367 


one of these as compared with the others. The indication of pro- 
nunciation is not more precise than in the spelling book, though the 
method employed is somewhat different. Instead of figures placed 
above the vowels to indicate their quality, diacritical marks alone 
are used. Occasionally words are spelled out to indicate their pro- 
nunciation, as spens for spence, but this principle is not frequently or 
consistently used. It is unfortunate that Webster did not provide 
a more adequate system for recording sounds, for undoubtedly 
Webster’s spelling books and dictionaries have added greatly to the 
difficulty in securing the popular acceptance of any later more precise 
and economical methods of indicating pronunciation. 

It is a commonly accepted view that Webster’s chief contribution 
in his American Dictionary lay in the definition of words, not merely 
new American words, but in general the vocabulary of the language. 
Sir James Murray, Evolution of English Lexicography, p. 43, says that 
‘Webster was a great man, a born definer of words.’”’ In this respect 
lexicography in the nineteenth century has made some of its greatest 
advances, and Webster’s definitions have been vastly improved 
upon, at least, for comprehensiveness, by those of the New English 
Dictionary. Modern dictionaries are not the work of one man but 
are codperative efforts in which the detailed knowledge of specialists 
in various subjects is incorporated. Moreover the modern library 
has on its shelves a much richer collection of works of reference than 
that which was available to the scholar of Webster’s day. Webster 
prided himself specially on his definitions of scientific terms, but obvi- 
ously his definitions of terms, for example of electricity, steel, etc., 
could not go beyond the state of knowledge of his day. One must 
admire nevertheless both the courage and the skill of Webster in his 
definitions. He was not afraid to attack any term nor did he often 
fail to give a definition which was clear, and true at least to the ele- 
ments of the subject defined. In this part of his work especially 
Webster’s Yankee ingenuity stood him in good stead. He was a good 
definer of words because he wanted to know about all things, not 
merely about them in general, but with the detailed knowledge 
which comes from taking ideas apart and putting them together 


368 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


again. In this connection it is in point to recall the variety of Web- 
ster’s intellectual interests, that he was active as grammarian, lexi- 
cographer, essayist, newspaper editor, educator, lawyer, politician, 
farmer, and always as scientific observer. His published writings 
covered a wide range of subjects, including not only educational and 
literary works but more technical treatises, such as the elaborate 
History of Pestilential Diseases, published in two volumes in 1799, 
the important Rights of Neutrals, published in 1802, and in the same 
year a discussion of Banking Institutions and Insurance Offices. He 
was a not infrequent contributor to the learned journals of his day 
and he was actively interested in various learned societies. The 
parallel between Webster and Franklin is in a number of respects 
close, and in the definitions of his dictionary Webster reveals a 
clearness of mind, soundness of judgment and catholicity of interest 
that puts him intellectually in the same class with Franklin. 
Webster’s definitions, however, are also illustrative of one of the 
constant limitations of the man. He was so possessed with the 
notion of the importance of New England that he often fell into a 
garrulous provincialism not pardonable in one who set out to write 
an American, not merely a New England dictionary. Much of this 
comment is now historically interesting or amusing, but Webster’s 
American contemporaries often found it annoying, even New Eng- 
landers, if they were highly cultivated and cosmopolitan, doubtless 
being willing to forget that there was such a thing as American pro- 
vincialism. Thus there is a flavor of rusticity in the comment added 
at the end of the definition of sauce, that ‘‘sauce consisting of stewed 
apples is a great article in some parts of New England; but cranberries 
make the most delicious sauce.’”’? Under spell we learn that the word 
means in New England, ‘“‘a short time, a little time,” a use said to 
be not elegant. It also meant in New England “‘a turn of gratuitous 
labor, sometimes accompanied with presents. People give their 
neighbors a spell.”” This apparently Webster considered to be not 
inelegant. As a verb one of the meanings of spell is given as ‘‘to 
take another’s place or turn temporarily in any labor or service,” 
and this is said to be a ‘‘popular use of the word in New England.”’ 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 369 


It may have been so, but were the popular and inelegant uses of New 
England any more important in a supposedly national American 
dictionary than the popular and inelegant uses of any other parts 
of the country? Webster, in short, did not sufficiently discriminate 
between two of his interests. He was interested mainly in the prep- 
aration of a general standard American dictionary, but also in the 
study of New England provincialisms, and this latter interest some- 
times crept in where it did not belong. 

Webster’s patriotism may likewise be said to have had some 
flavor of provincialism. Words current in American use should 
undoubtedly find a place in any dictionary of the English language, 
whether that dictionary is published in America or England. If the 
English dictionaries before Webster’s were defective in this respect, 
the defect arose from ignorance, not conscious neglect. Peculiar 
American words or uses, however, constitute only a small part of any 
dictionary which is at all satisfactory as a dictionary of the English 
language, and Webster’s dictionary is significant because of its gen- 
eral value as an English dictionary. Webster’s insistence on the 
Americanism of his dictionary betrays a local self-consciousness 
which the situation did not warrant. It did not in fact carry him 
very far. Aside from the definition of a certain number of words 
peculiar to America or common to England and America, but with 
uses peculiar to the latter, the Americanism of the American Dic- 
tionary consists merely in the use of illustrative quotations of the 
meanings of words taken from American writings. With pride and 
satisfaction Webster places Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jay, 
Marshall, Irving, and other Americans as authorities on the same 
page as Boyle, Hooker, Milton, Dryden, and other names great in 
English literature. The satisfaction seems somewhat irrelevant and 
puerile. In a dictionary it is of no great importance whether quo- 
tations illustrating the meaning of a word are taken from one repu- 
table author or another. The important thing is merely that they 
shall illustrate the word defined. No one would question that 
Washington or Franklin used many words, the common words of the 
language, as clearly and exactly as any other writer of English used 


370 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


these words. It seems therefore rather an empty distinction to 
quote Washington, Franklin and other Americans merely for the 
sake of putting their names on the same page as the names of Boyle, 
Hooker, Milton, and Dryden when almost any writer of English 
would have served equally well. 

Before the appearance of Webster’s dictionary of 1828 only two 
other lexicographical adventures in America call for notice. For the 
most part, after the appearance of Walker’s dictionary, American 
publishers were content to reprint Walker, either in full or abridged, 
and either as an independent authority or buttressed with the august 
name of Dr. Johnson. The New Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of 
the English Language, by An American Gentleman, published at 
Burlington, New Jersey, 1813, was the work of Richard 8. Coxe, a 
native of New Jersey and a graduate of Princeton, concerning whom 
little further is known. His dictionary was acknowledgedly based 
on Johnson and Walker, and on the whole it offers much less of in- 
terest than one might expect from its title. The same must be said 
of The American Standard of Orthography and Pronunciation and 
Improved Dictionary of the English Language, by Burgiss Allison, also 
published at Burlington, New Jersey, in 1815. This book also fol- 
lowed Walker, and its Americanism did not extend much beyond 
the title page. Both Coxe’s and Allison’s dictionaries are consider- 
ably larger than the earlier school dictionaries, from which one may 
infer that the making of dictionaries in America was growing in 
dignity at least as a commercial undertaking. 

After Webster the most distinguished name in the annals of 
American dictionary making is that of Joseph Emerson Worcester. 
In 1830, two years after the publication of Webster’s American Dic- 
tionary, Worcester published his Comprehensive Pronouncing and 
Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language. ‘This is an octavo 
book of four hundred pages, and it was intended not merely for 
rustics and laborers but for the use of cultivated speakers and writ- 
ers. Worcester had previously edited ‘‘Johnson’s Dictionary, as 
improved by Todd and abridged by Chalmers, with Walker’s Pro- 
nouncing Dictionary combined,” and while engaged in this task, he 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 371 


formed the plan for his own dictionary. Another labor which 
Worcester also performed before publishing his dictionary of 18380, 
was an abridgement of Webster’s American Dictionary, which he 
characterized, in the Preface to his own dictionary, p. vii, as ‘‘a 
work of vast learning and research, containing the most complete 
vocabulary of the language that has yet appeared, and comprising 
numerous and great improvements upon all works of the kind which 
preceded it, with respect to the etymology and definition of words.” 
Worcester thus in a way grew up in the shadow of Webster, a rela- 
tionship which led later to many bitter charges and counter-charges 
when rivalry interrupted the friendly relations between the two. 

Worcester’s claims to distinction in his dictionary of 1830 are 
not numerous, but are well founded. He makes the usual boast of 
having added many new words to his dictionary. In spelling he 
followed a middle course between Webster and the British diction- 
aries. His definitions are very brief, but well phrased. He avoided 
Webster’s many errors in etymologizing by not giving any etymolo- 
gies, and in general he showed greater common sense and better 
judgment than Webster. The most distinctive part of the book lies 
in the treatment of pronunciation, which was made “‘a leading 
object, and has received particular attention.”” The pronunciations 
are carefully indicated, and for words differently pronounced by dif- 
ferent authorities, a list of variorum pronunciations, selected from 
twenty-six different earlier dictionaries and treatises on pronuncia- 
tion, is given. On the whole the book impresses one as being a 
discriminating and scholarly piece of work. 

Worcester’s dictionary grew in size in later editions. The edition 
of 1846 was entitled A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the Eng- 
lish Language, and this larger form then frequently appeared later in 
an abbreviated form, the date of copyright of this abridgment being 
1850. The next important edition of Worcester’s dictionary was 
the quarto edition of 1860, which in essentials established the final 
form of Worcester. Webster’s dictionary had been published in the 
preceding year in an elaborate Pictorial Edition, and it was at this 
time and later that “‘the battle of the dictionaries”’ was at its height. 


372 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


Partisanships in the choice of dictionaries were aroused partly by 
the fact that there really was a choice between the two main claim- 
ants, Worcester standing on the whole closer to British use and 
Webster, in some respects, standing for a local and somewhat pro- 
vincial American use. But unquestionably feeling was also aroused 
by the methods employed in the advertising and selling of the two 
books. ‘This latter subject is a chapter in the history of American 
business methods which must be left to the student of morals. As 
the last edition of Worcester appeared in 1886, and as the book is 
now practically no longer in use, the interest of the subject is now 
exclusively historical and ethical. It is now impossible to revive 
any of the violent hostilities and preferences of the mid-decades of 
the nineteenth century. In the Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), 
Chapter I, Holmes remarks that a certain word is ‘‘ considered vulgar 
by the nobility and gentry of the Mother Country, and it is not to be 
found in Mr. Worcester’s Dictionary, on which, as is well known, 
the literary men of this metropolis are by special statute allowed 
to be sworn in place of the Bible. I know one, certainly, who never 
takes his oath on any other dictionary, any advertising fiction to the 
contrary, notwithstanding.’”’ Worcester may have been the Bible of 
Bostonians two or three generations ago, but it does not seem that 
the British characteristics of Worcester were pronounced enough to 
account for the failure of so good a book to continue in general use. 
A little editing might easily have removed the objectionable features. 
If one balances the faults of the Webster of 1828 against the faults 
of the Worcester of 1830, the totals are greatly in favor of Worcester. 
One must conclude that the success of Webster has been due largely 
to judicious editing, manufacturing and selling. 

The special student of phonetics may be interested in two books 
of the middle of the nineteenth century which are best classed as 
among the curiosities of dictionary making. The first of these is 
An Explanatory and Phonographic Pronouncing Dictionary of the 
English Language, edited by William Bolles, 1847, a book of 944 folio 
pages. ‘The book does not use a phonetic type, but indicates pro- 
nunciations by superior figures. It differs from earlier dictionaries 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 373 


in that it attempts to give the pronunciation of all words, not merely 
those which are supposedly difficult or concerning which there is a 
difference of opinion. It is not a book of much originality or fineness 
of observation but it is interesting as an endeavor to give a complete 
phonetic record of the language. Strangely enough it nowhere men- 
tions Webster or Worcester. A good deal is said about Walker and 
Sheridan, and though the book boasts of additions to Walker’s num- 
ber of words, so far as ideas concerning pronunciation are concerned, 
it is dependent mainly on Sheridan. 

The other book is the American Phonetic Dictionary of the Eng- 
lish Language, Adapted to the Present State of Literature and Science; 
with pronouncing vocabularies of Classical, Scriptural and Geographical 
Names, Designed by Nathaniel Storrs, compiled by Dan 8. Smalley, 
with a general introduction by A. J. Ellis, Cincinnati, 1855. ‘‘In 
presenting to the world its first Phonetic Dictionary,’’ says the 
Preface, ‘‘the compiler feels confident that the simple but appro- 
priate dress with which he has clothed the spoken language cannot 
fail to commend itself to the favourable consideration of every friend 
of human progress.’’ The book is intended ‘“‘to represent, by means 
of a phonetic alphabet, that pronunciation of the English language 
which is supported by the greatest number of competent authorities”’ 
and to define the meanings of words as they are used by standard 
writers. Words are arranged in alphabetical order and are then 
phonetically transcribed, the definitions also being in phonetic type. 
The phonetic alphabet is a good one, and it was devised by Benn 
Pitman, Elias Longley, and A. J. Ellis and others. The book was 
published by the aid of a bequest left for this pupose by Nathaniel 
Storrs, a Boston school principal. It was published in Cincinnati 
because the Longleys were established there as phonetic publishers, 
especially of Pitman shorthand books. The phonetic alphabet used 
in the dictionary differs but slightly from the one devised by Isaac 
Pitman, but the changes, such as they were, are the only features 
of the book that can be called American. It is not a record of 
American speech, but merely a phonetic record of a generalized kind 
of English speech, published in America. It has now little present 


374 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


interest, neither has it been historically significant. To invent and 
illustrate a phonetic alphabet may be an interesting undertaking, 
but to carry the use of a phonetic alphabet through a whole diction- 
ary, as the compiler of the American Phonetic Dictionary has done, 
has the ironic result of proving just the opposite of what the compiler 
intended. It proves that even a phonetic alphabet does not hold the 
mirror up to nature, but that after all it is only an approximate, 
therefore conventional, representation of real speech, like the tradi- 
tional alphabet. : 

Of later American dictionaries it is not necessary to speak in 
detail. The Century Dictionary first appeared in six volumes in 1889- 
1891, and it remains the most elaborate American attempt in the 
field of lexicography. In 1894 The Century Cyclopedia of Names 
was added, and in 1897, The Century Atlas of the World. In 1911 
the book was published in a revised edition of twelve volumes, ten 
being devoted to the dictionary and the eleventh and twelfth to the 
Cyclopedia and Atlas. Obviously a dictionary in twelve volumes is 
not a popular handbook, and as a scholarly dictionary, the Century 
unavoidably must be compared with the New English Dictionary. 
If one may qualify in matters of scholarship, one may say that the 
Century is a convenient and practical scholarly dictionary and the 
New English Dictionary is a thorough and scientific scholarly dic- 
tionary. In plan the two differ in that the New English Dictionary 
pays much more attention to the historical aspects of the English 
language, its most important contributions being the citations of 
passages illustrating the uses of English words from Middle English 
to modern times. 

In conjunction with the Century Dictionary must be named the 
Standard Dictionary, first published in two volumes, Volume I in 
1893, Volume II in 1894. In subsequent editions this book has 
undergone changes in content and size, but none so extensive as to 
alter its original character. Like the Century it may be described as 
holding a middle course between a learned and a popular dictionary. 
It is not merely a practical desk book, and on the other hand, it can- 
not be said to exhaust the supplies of present scholarly information. 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 375 


Both the Century and the Standard have numerous practical and 
ingenious features which enhance their value as useful books. To- 
gether with the New International, the latest revision of the old 
Webster, they are the three most commonly used dictionaries in 
America. These three dictionaries illustrate the disappearance of 
the individual in the making of modern dictionaries, and the emer- 
gence of what may be called the syndicate or composite dictionary. 
The older dictionaries depended for their value upon a name, the 
name of Johnson, or Sheridan, or Walker, or Webster, or Worcester. 
The modern dictionary is a large and costly publication, the work of 
numerous scholars, specialists and compilers whose names are alto- 
gether unknown to the persons who use the dictionaries. In other 
words, the dictionary has been slowly moving away from the con- 
ception of the dictionary as some person’s description of a “‘system”’ 
of the English language, from the statement of what an “‘authority” 
thinks the language ought to be, to an attempt to record the lan- 
guage as it has existed and as it exists in all its complexities and 
infinite variations of practice. The complete realization of this lat- 
ter ideal is impossible, whether for an individual or for a syndicate, 
but it is obviously in this direction that the chief advances in American 
lexicography are still to be made. 

The dictionary of “‘ Americanisms” is a special kind of dictionary 
which has flourished with vigor in America. The Americanisms 
contained in these dictionaries were gathered not for the purpose of 
contrast with ‘‘Briticisms,’’ but with the central body of English 
usage which supposedly was established most soundly and rightfully 
in the speech of England. The use of the term Americanism goes 
back to the eighteenth century, but the idea of a corresponding type 
of expression, to be designated Briticisms, was apparently so recent 
that a word was not needed for it until much later. The earliest 
citation in the New English Dictionary is for 1883, but Tucker, 
American English, p. 42, “‘though he will not assert positively that 
he invented this now well accepted word,” believes nevertheless that 
his use of it in a paper read before the Albany Institute, June 16, 
1882, is the first on record. But Americanisms almost necessarily 


376 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA 


imply Briticisms. So also do Scotticisms, and a diligent reading of 
the eighteenth-century discussions of language would very probably 
reveal some stray instances of the use of the word Briticisms. The 
first dictionary of Americanisms was Pickering’s Vocabulary or Col- 
lection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar 
to the United States, published in 1816, the materials having been 
collected some ten or more years earlier, during the author’s residence 
in England. Pickering’s Vocabulary called forth a Letter, by Noah 
Webster, 1817, in which Webster rose with patriotic indignation to 
the defense of American English. Bartlett’s Dictionary of American- 
isms, a Glossary of Words and Phrases usually regarded as peculiar 
to the United States, may be described as the classic example among 
books of this kind. It was first published in 1848, towards the close 
of the picturesque half century of American life. It appeared with 
enlargements in later editions, a second in 1859, a third in 1860, and 
a last edition in 1877. After Bartlett must be mentioned the slighter 
work of Elwyn, Glossary of Supposed Americanisms, published in 1859. 
Farmer’s Americanisms, Old and New, 1889, was the work of an 
Englishman, who expanded his subject by including ‘numerous 
Anecdotal, Historical, Explanatory and Folk-Lore Notes.” A more 
specialized glossary was Norton’s Political Americanisms, 1890. 
Another book in the older fashion is Clapin’s New Dictionary of 
Americanisms, 1902. The main defect of all these books is their lack 
of critical and scientific method. Their subject was not clearly 
defined, their collections being consequently heterogeneous, nor were 
the examples of supposed Americanisms which they contained sys- 
tematically verified for time and place of occurrence in a way to 
enable the reader to determine the degree of their authenticity. 
These defects of method were corrected in Thornton’s American 
Glossary, which appeared in two volumes in 1912. Though Thorn- 
ton’s American Glossary is by no means final so far as inclusiveness 
is concerned, as indeed it makes no pretense to be, it does supply a 
sound method by which later students of the subject must profit. 
Several works not actually in dictionary form may be mentioned 
here because they discuss mainly vocabulary and because their 


AMERICAN DICTIONARIES 377 


indexes provide useful lists of words. The first of these is De Vere’s 
Americanisms, published in 1872. Mencken’s American Language 
has much more to say about vocabulary than any other subject and 
is well indexed. Tucker’s American English, 1921, separates the 
collections of the older books into two groups of false and genuine 
Americanisms. Less extensive though no less interesting as human 
documents than the books that have been mentioned are Lowell’s 
prefaces to the first and second series of the Biglow Papers, 1848 and 
1864, and Americanisms and Briticisms, by Brander Matthews, pub- 
lished in 1892. As the controversial and personal interests in the 
study of Americanisms seem now to be receding, perhaps the coming 
generation may see further advances in the scientific study of the 
subject. Above all richer collections of words are needed, with 
illustrative passages showing their use in context. The study of 
Americanisms will thus serve its most useful purpose in making 
definite and detailed our knowledge of the past of American life, 
preparatory to the compilation of a genuine dictionary of Ameri- 
canisms. 


| ARPA ity) 


ANY 
Laat ‘ dh FE lire 
, ih I 4 
; } ian 4 
Hane WRAL 
” ft ri 
i. bs me wih 
/ ‘ M Vy 
; RING any A) 
Bae q i iy tints 
Hy nin Y A 


yon 
} (SPAIN ON i 
ir i a0 f J 
te J ray ate Bey) dit i 
. ae y Ne sf Re BLN) RA L M4 
Ar Alaa A ANTE 8 
5 7 y ‘ iy 5 
j fi P 7) , 


Fd vA 
Abe Ns 


eratn 
teal 


AD 
ah 


Te 
ap 


Wea Gl Mi a te 


UNIVERSITY OF 


wn 


if ; + a 
ee ae, 
heise 
Ne a i 
a 
t i i : : r. 
sfaths f 4 
i % 
ph 
; 
if * . 
Hf : 
; 
ai ta 


